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THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

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V/i a/ic^y/i care c ■ lit nior ia ( Qa it ere/ at c) Ircxlfvj^-on -^ nm^ « . 



A LIFE 



OF 



WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 



BY 



SIDNEY LEE 



WITH PORTRAITS AND FACSIMILES 



NEW AND REVISED EDITION 



WITH A NEW PREFACE 



Neto gork 

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

1909 

All rights reserved 



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Sfeaketpearlana 



Copyright, 1909, and f^9S. 
By the MACMILLAN COMPANY. 



Set up and electrotyped. Published April, igog. 



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J. S. Gushing Co. — Berwick & Smith Co, 

Norwood, Mass., U.S.A. 



ILIBRARY of CONGRESS 
Two GoDies Received 

APR 19 iao9 



PREFACE TO THE NEW AND REVISED 

EDITION 

SOME NEWLY DISCOVERED REFERENCES TO 
SHAKESPEARE 

More than ten years have now elapsed since this 
work was published for the first time in this country. 
In the present reissue errors have been corrected, 
the bibliographies have been brought up to date, and 
some additions of importance have been made to the 
bibliographical information. I hope that, with the 
additions and corrections that are now incorporated 
into the text or notes, the volume embodies the results 
of all recent researches into Shakespeare's life, or 
into the biographical or bibHographical aspects of his 
work, about which the student of the poet's biography 
is entitled to expect information from the poet's 
biographer. 

A few references to Shakespeare have lately come 
to light for the first time in contemporary manu- 
scripts. I have not found it practicable to note these 
discoveries in detail in the body of the revised book 
without disturbing the balance of the chapters. I 
have therefore contented myself with a cursory men- 
tion of the discoveries in the text, and devote this 



VI WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

preface to a fuller account of these fruits of recent 
research. None of the 'new' references to Shake- 
speare are of the first irnportance. But every early- 
documentary mention of Shakespeare justly claims 
the biographical student's respectful attention. 

I place these new notices before my readers in the 
chronological order which they naturally take among 
the previously recorded events of Shakespeare's life.^ 

I 

Although heredity, as far as the results of present 
investigation go, fails to account for the birth of 
supreme poetic genius, the biographer of Shake- 
speare has often deplored the absence of any refer- 
ence to the personal character of Shakespeare's father. 
A glimmer of light has now been shed on this theme. 
The Rev. Andrew Clark, rector of Great Leigh s, 
Chelmsford, who has won a deserved reputation by 
his researches into the history of Oxford University, 
examined some five years since a seventeenth-century 
collection of books and papers which were bequeathed 
to the town of Maldon, in Essex, by a patriotic native, 
Thomas Plume. The testator was for nearly fifty 
years Vicar of Greenwich, and was also Archdeacon 
of Rochester. He is now only remembered as founder 

1 The account given here of the new references is partly reprinted 
from an article contributed by the author to The Nineteenth Century 
and After (May 1906) under the title 'The Future of Shakespearean 
Research.' 



PREFACE TO THE NEW EDITION vii 

of the Plumean Professorship of Astronomy in the 
University of Cambridge. 

Archdeacon Plume's bequest to the town of Maldon 
included a manuscript pocket-book in which, round 
about the year 1656, he was in the habit, like many 
of his contemporaries, of writing down anecdotes 
which amused him in the conversation of his friends. 
The stories concerning literary men which figure in 
Plume's pocket-book have a high claim to considera- 
tion, because they embody, albeit at second-hand, 
the talk of no less a personage than Ben Jonson. 
Among Plume's acquaintances was John Hacket, an 
eminent Bishop of Lichfield, who was interested in 
the drama, and was long on very friendly terms with 
Ben Jonson. The latter's comments on life and lit- 
erature circulated widely, and some of the tales which 
Plume associated with him in his pocket-book on 
Hacket's authority are recorded elsewhere. But one 
or two fragments of Jonson's talk which have found 
their way into the Maldon MS. seem peculiar to it. 
Plume's notes, which are scrappily written in an 
abbreviated script, supply two new statements in re- 
gard to Shakespeare, of which only one calls for 
special notice here.^ 

1 Plume's second mention of Shakespeare may be relegated to a 
footnote. It shows the poet in a frivolous and undignified mood, 
which can be readily paralleled in other anecdotal reminiscences of 
him. There is plenty of evidence that it vs^as a common sport for wits 
at social meetings of the period to suggest impromptu epitaphs for 
themselves and their companions. Ben Jonson gave his Scottish 



viii WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

Plume writes that the poet 'was a glover's son,' a 
well-worn statement which calls for no comment. 
He proceeds thus (I expand the abbreviations) : 
* S[i]r John Mennes saw once his old f [athe]r in h[is] 
shop — a merry cheeked old man th[a]t s[ai]d " Will 
was a g[oo]d Hon [est] Fellow, but he darest h[ave] 
crackt a jeast w[i]th him at any time." ' 

This entry requires some annotation. It is not easy 
to identify Sir John Mennes. Chronology seems to 
differentiate him from Sir John Mennes, the admiral 
and versifier of Charles the First's reign, who was 
only two years old when Shakespeare's father died in 
1 60 1. But it may well be that the story was related 
by Sir John Mennes, who mingled freely in literary 
society in the generation following Shakespeare's 
death, and that Plume hastily and inaccurately 
credited him with an experience which was in Sir 
John's conversation assigned to some other. At any 
rate, Plume's note preserves a personal description 

friend, Drummond of Hawthornden, examples of how the unimpressive 
game was played at his own expense. When recording Jonson's con- 
versation, Drummond relates that one of the epitaphs suggested for 
Jonson at a social gathering ran, according to his own account, thus : 

Here lyes honest Ben 

That had not a beard on his chen. 

Plume independently quotes on Racket's authority another of the mock 
epitaphs on Ben to like effect : 

Here lies Benjamin . . . w[it]h littl hair up[onl his chin 

Who w[hi]l[e] he lived w[as] aslow th[ingj, and now he is d[ea]d is noth[ing]. 

This, of course, is the very false gallop of verses, but Plume asserts that 
the foolish effusion was an impromptu jest of Jonson's friend, ' Shake- 
sp[ea]r[e].' 



PREFACE TO THE NEW EDITION ix 

of the poet's father which belongs to nearly contem- 
porary gossip, and is the only personal reminiscence 
of him that has yet been discovered. That John 
Shakespeare should have been * a merry cheeked 
old man ' fully harmonises with all we know of the 
son's faculty for gaiety. That father and son should 
have cracked jests with one another, and that the 
older man should have reckoned himself a match in 
repartee for the younger, sets their mutual relations 
in an amiable light. There is testimony of a sort to 
the poet's character in his father's reported descrip- 
tion of him as *a good honest fellow.' 

II 

The second new reference concerns the earlier 
years of Shakespeare's sojourn in London. Early 
in March 1904 a more thorough search at the Public 
Record Office than had yet been undertaken into 
the accounts of the Commissioners for the collection 
in London of a subsidy granted to Queen Elizabeth 
by one of her later Parliaments, revealed a new men- 
tion of Shakespeare's name in the capacity of tax- 
payer, and finally settled a doubt as to his early 
place of residence in the metropolis. A document 
was already known, showing that one William Shake- 
speare, inhabitant of a tenement in the parish of 
St. Helen's, in Bishopsgate, stood indebted to the 
tax-collectors in October 1598 to the amount of 
13^. 4d., which sum was levied on goods valued at 5/. 



X WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

But there was nothing in that paper to identify this 
defaulter with the dramatist, who, according to other 
information, was Hving at the time in Southwark. A 
newly discovered entry in the Subsidy Rolls, dated 
November 15, 1597, now proves that the same 
William Shakespeare was returned at an earlier 
period, in October 1596, as a defaulter for another, 
and a smaller, tax of 5^-., which had also been levied 
on his goods in St. Helen's. The * new ' record bears, 
moreover, an annotation, of a little later date, to the 
effect that the defaulter had removed from Bishops- 
gate to the Liberty of the Clink in Southwark, of 
which the supreme landlord was the Bishop of Win- 
chester. The Bishopsgate levy of October 1596, as 
well as that of October 1598, is now shown, more- 
over, to have been based on an assessment made as 
early as 1593 or 1594. Payment was obviously 
sought at the later dates in ignorance of the fact 
that Shakespeare had by that time left St. Helen's 
long since for South London. It would seem from 
the * new ' evidence that the attention of the Bishop 
of Winchester's officials was directed to the default 
by the Bishopsgate tax-collector, and that through 
them Shakespeare, with great magnanimity, ulti- 
mately paid, after he had crossed the Thames, all 
that was claimed in respect of his Bishopsgate 
lodging.^ There has never been any question that 

1 These discoveries were due to Messrs. Montague S. Giuseppi, 
R. E. G. Kirk, and E. F. Kirk, of the Public Record Office. They 



PREFACE TO THE NEW EDITION xi 

at the midmost period of his London career the 
dramatist resided in Southwark, which was then 
the chief centre of theatrical Ufe. It is now placed 
beyond reasonable doubt that he migrated thither 
from St. Helen's, Bishopsgate, a district within 
easy walking distance of Shoreditch, which pre- 
ceded Southwark as the leading theatrical quarter 
of London. 

Ill 

The third * new ' reference concerns that ap- 
parently paradoxical endeavour on the part of 
Shakespeare's father to obtain, when his affairs were 
much embarrassed, the unremunerative luxury of a 
coat-of-arms. It is obvious that the inspirer of 
the transaction, which involved an unremunerative 
outlay, was the dramatist, the old man's eldest son. 
Echoes of the storm of contempt which assailed the 
Heralds' College on account of its easy-going com- 
placency in granting this and like applications are 
heard in the pages of Shakespeare's biography. But 
some manuscript indictments of the college in Shake- 
speare's day, which have not been hitherto known or 
consulted, define with greater precision than before 
the allegations aimed at Shakespeare's heraldic 
venture, and suggest more plainly its predisposing 
causes. 

were first publicly described by Professor J. W. Hales, in a letter to the 
Athenceum for March i6, 1904. 



xii WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

Two manuscripts on the subject have been 
courteously lent me for my perusal by Messrs. 
Pearson & Co., of Pall Mall Place. Both may 
confidently be ascribed to the year 1599. The first 
of them bears this title : * A brieff Discourse of ye 
causes of Discord amongst ye Officers of arms and 
of the great abuses and absurdities com[m]ited by 
[heraldic] painters to the great prejudice and hin- 
drance of the same office.' 

This little paper book of eighteen leaves is an 
elaborate exposure of current heraldic scandals in the 
handwriting of William Smith, Rouge Dragon. The 
writer dedicates his work to Henry Howard, Earl of 
Northampton, K.G., a Commissioner for the office 
of Earl-Marshal, the chief controller of the College of 
Arms. Smith makes no mention of Shakespeare ; 
but he pertinently illustrates the strange negotiation 
with the Heralds' College, in which Shakespeare took 
part. Smith does not ridicule Shakespeare himself, 
but he points his scornful finger at two of Shake- 
speare's closest professional associates, Augustine 
Phillipps and Thomas Pope, comedians of repute, 
whose names figure in the prefatory list of ' the prin- 
cipal actors ' in Shakespeare's plays in the First 
Folio. Both these actors. Smith tells us, had out- 
raged truth and decency in endeavours to secure 
heraldic badges of gentility. On leaf 8a of his 
pamphlet. Smith writes : ' Phillipps the player had 
graven in a gold ring the armes of S"^ W" Phillipp, 



PREFACE TO THE NEW EDITION xiii 

Lord Bardolph, with the said L. Bardolph's cote 
quartred, which I shewed to M'' York [2>. Ralph 
Brooke, a rigorous champion of heraldic orthodoxy], 
at a small graver's shopp in Foster Lane.' Lower 
down, on the same page, appear these words, ' Pope 
the player would have no other armes but the armes 
of S'' Tho. Pope, Chancelor of ye Augmentations.' 

Player PhiUipps's fraudulently adopted ancestor, 
' Sir William Phillipp,' won renown at Agincourt 
in 1415. Doubtless the oid warrior's title of Lord 
Bardolf or Bardolph received satiric commemora- 
tion at Shakespeare's hands when the dramatist 
bestowed on Falstaff's red-nosed companion the 
name of his actor-friend's imaginary progenitor. 
But Shakespeare's affectionate relations with player 
Phillipps were only interrupted by the latter's death 
in 1605, when he bequeathed * to my fellowe, Wil- 
liam Shakespeare, a thirty-shilling piece of gold.' 
Player Pope's alleged sponsor in heraldry, Sir 
Thomas Pope, was the courtier and Privy Coun- 
cillor, who died without issue in the first year of 
EHzabeth's reign, after founding Trinity College, 
Oxford. Shakespeare's claim in his own heraldic 
application to descent from unspecified persons who 
did * valiant and faithful service' in Henry the 
Seventh's time is thus seen to be comparatively 
modest. The discovery of the charges which Smith 
brought against two of the dramatist's leading col- 
leagues is clear proof that Shakespeare's petition to 



xiv WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

the Heralds' College strictly accorded with the con- 
temporary etiquette and aspiration of the theatrical 
profession. 

The second of the two heraldic manuscripts 
which came into my hands was a paper book of 
seventeen leaves, containing desultory notes on 
grants of arms which (it was urged with satiric 
vehemence) had been erroneously made by Sir 
William Dethick, Garter King, at the end of^ Queen 
Elizabeth's reign. Two handwritings figure in these 
pages, one of which I have not succeeded in iden- 
tifying : but the other is the autograph of Ralph 
Brooke, York Herald, who was repeatedly exposing 
alleged malpractices of his colleagues. At the left- 
hand corner of the outside page is a list in Brooke's 
handwriting of the surnames of twenty-three persons 
whom he charged with having received coats-of-arms 
on false pretences. Fourth on the list stands the 
surname of ' Shakespeare,' and twelfth on the list 
stands that of ' Cowley,' who may be identified with 
Shakespeare's actor-friend, Richard Cowley, the 
creator of Verges in Much Ado about Nothing. Un- 
luckily the alleged heraldic offences are only described 
at length in the case of thirteen recent grants, and 
Shakespeare is not one of those persons whose de- 
linquencies are set out in full. Details are missing 
of the strictures passed on the claims which Shake- 
speare advanced to gentility. But such indictments 
as are unabridged supply pertinent suggestion of the 



PREFACE TO THE NEW EDITION xv 

grounds on which Shakespeare's title to coat armour 
was questioned by contemporary criticism. 

The censor's general allegation is that men of low 
birth and undignified employment were corruptly 
suffered by the heralds to credit themselves with 
noble or highly aristocratic descent, and to bear, in 
consideration of large money payments, coat armour 
of respectable antiquity. In one case Brooke avers 
that an embroiderer, calling himself Parr, who failed 
to give proof of his right to that surname and 
was unquestionably the son of a pedlar, received 
permission to use the crest and coat of Sir William 
Parr, Marquis of Northampton, who died in 1571, 
*the last male of his house.' Three other men, who 
were accused of bribing the college into forging pedi- 
grees, are credited with the occupations respectively 
of a seller of stockings, a haberdasher, and a stationer 
or printer, while a fourth offender is stated to be an 
alien. In some instances Garter is charged with 
having pocketed his fee, and then with having pru- 
dently postponed the formal issue of the promised 
grant of arms until the applicant was dead. One 
feels regret that Shakespeare's name should (in 
Brooke's neat script) ornament the first leaf of this 
manuscript treasury of scandal. The dramatist's 
negotiation with the Heralds' College clearly in- 
volved him in a widely distributed notoriety. He 
identified himself with the bourgeois ambitions of his 
day so thoroughly as to invite challenge from prosaic 
minds of his true title to fame. 



xvi WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 



IV 

The fourth * new ' contemporary reference is pro- 
bably the most interesting of all.^ It concerns the 
dramatist in his declining years. In 1613 he had 
retired, as far as our existing knowledge goes, from 
professional life to enjoy a dignified repose in his 
native town of Stratford-on-Avon. The only facts 
hitherto assigned with absolute confidence by his 
biographers to that year are his purchase of a house 
near the theatre in Blackfriars, by a deed dated the 
loth of March, and his mortgaging of a part of the 
property next day. To these pieces of documentary 
evidence, each of which bears Shakespeare's auto- 
graph signature, another of almost identical date, 
although of a different significance, is now to be 
added. On March 31, 161 3, the steward of the sixth 
Earl of Rutland paid the dramatist the sum of 
'forty-four shillings in gold,' for a semi-professional 
service. The circumstance is set forth in the Earl's 
account- or household-books for the years 161 2 and 
161 3, which are preserved at Belvoir Castle, and have 
been lately examined and described for the first time 
by Sir Henry Maxwell-Lyte, Deputy-Keeper of the 
Public Records, and Mr. W. H. Stevenson, the his- 

1 This discovery was first announced in the London Times news- 
paper on December 27, 1 905. The entry concerning Shakespeare is 
printed in The Historical Manuscripts Co^nmission'' s Report on the 
Historical Manuscripts of Belvoir Castle, vol. iv. p. 494. 



PREFACE TO THE NEW EDITION xvii 

torical scholar, who have calendared them for the 
Historical Manuscripts Commission, The entry con- 
cerning Shakespeare in the Belvoir Household Book 
for 1 612-3 runs thus: 'Item 31 Martij [161 3] to Mr. 
Shakspeare in gold about my Lordes Impreso xliiijs. 
To Richard Burbadge for paynting and making yt in 
gold xliiijs. [Total] iiij^^ viij^' It thus appears that 
the dramatist joined with his friend and actor-col- 
league, Richard Burbage, in designing for the Earl 
of Rutland an 'impresa,' i.e. a semi-heraldic pictorial 
badge with an attached motto, by which men of 
fashion set at the time much store. 

Elizabethan men of letters, in imitation of their 
Italian contemporaries, habitually applied their in- 
genuity to the invention of such fantastic devices 
for their patrons and for themselves. Ben Jonson 
was proud of an ' impresa ' that he had designed for 
himself. Sir Philip Sidney was reckoned an expert 
in the pursuit. Samuel Daniel translated an Italian 
treatise on it, with abundance of original illustration. 
English essays on the theme came from the pens of 
the scholarly antiquary, William Camden, and of the 
Scottish poet, Drummond of Hawthornden. No 
Elizabethan writer deemed it beneath his dignity 
to identify himself with the prevailing taste, and the 
great dramatist in his declining days made his obei- 
sance to the accepted vogue. Previously he had only 
betrayed a knowledge of ' imprese ' by mentioning 
in his play of Richard II, iii. i. 25, that they were 



xviii WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

occasionally emblazoned in the stained-glass windows 
of noblemen's houses. 

The sixth Earl of Rutland, in whose behalf 
Shakespeare professionally turned his genius in this 
curious direction, has not hitherto figured among the 
associates of the dramatist. But the Earl was a 
friend of Shakespeare's patron the Earl of South- 
ampton. He belonged to a cultivated section of the 
nobility which patronised poetry and drama wjth 
consistent enthusiasm and generosity, and the dis- 
closure of a direct link between him and the poet 
can excite no surprise. 

When Francis Manners, the sixth Earl of Rut- 
land, consulted ' 'W Shakspeare ' about his ' impresa,' 
he had only enjoyed the title nine months. He had 
lately succeeded to the earldom on the death, with- 
out issue, of his elder brother Roger, the fifth Earl, 
June 26, 161 2. The latter was a peculiarly close 
friend of the Earl of Southampton. There had been 
talk of a marriage between Southampton and the 
Earl's sister Lady Bridget Manners. The two earls 
were constant visitors together to the London theatres 
at the end of the sixteenth century,^ and both suf- 
fered imprisonment together in the Tower of London 
for complicity in the Earl of Essex's plot early in 
1601. The fifth Earl's wife was daughter of Sir 
Philip Sidney, and she assiduously cultivated the 
society of men of letters, constantly entertaining Ben 

1 See pp. 392, 399, infra. 



PREFACE TO THE NEW EDITION xix 

Jonson and Francis Beaumont and corresponding 
with them. 

The sixth Earl of Rutland, who also joined the 
Earl of Southampton and his own elder brother in 
the Earl of Essex's plot and had endured imprison- 
ment with them, gave early proof of a resolve to 
maintain a traditional magnificence and hospitality 
during his tenure of the earldom. Barely two months 
after his succession he entertained King James and 
the Prince of Wales with regal splendour at his house 
of Belvoir Castle. It was some six months later that 
he solicited the aid of Shakespeare and Burbage in 
order to enhance the dignity of his equipment at a 
ceremonial of the Court. The 'impresa' in the 
design of which he enlisted Shakespeare's service was 
intended to adorn his shield at a spectacular tourna- 
ment in which courtiers were to engage at Whitehall 
on March 24, 161 3. Sir Henry Wotton, who was 
present on the occasion, noted, in a letter to a friend, 
the brilliance of the noble j ousters' * imprese,' and 
offers an interesting illustration of their symbolic 
subtlety and obscurity. Unluckily neither Wotton 
nor anyone else described the details of Shakespeare's 
invention for the Earl of Rutland. This is Wotton's 
description of the ceremony, which he sent to his 
friend Sir Edmund Bacon from London on March 31, 
161 3. * The day fell out wet, to the disgrace of many 
fine plumes . . . The two Riches [i.e. Sir Robert 
Rich and Sir Henry Rich, brothers of the first Earl 



XX WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

of Holland] only made a speech to the King. The 
rest [of whom the Earl of Rutland is mentioned by- 
name as one] were contented with bare imprese, 
whereof some were so dark that their meaning is 
not yet understood, unless perchance that were their 
meaning, not to be understood. The two best to my 
fancy were those of the two earl brothers {i.e. the 
Earls of Pembroke and of Montgomery]. The first 
a small, exceeding white pearl, and the words^j^A? 
candore valeo. The other, a sun casting a glance 
on the side of a pillar, and the beams reflecting 
with the motto Splendente refulget^ in which de- 
vice there seemed an agreement : the elder brother 
to allude to his own nature, and the other to his 
fortune.' ^ 

Some other points of interest are suggested by 
the entry of Shakespeare's name in the Belvoir 
Household books. Shakespeare's associate, Burbage, 
the actor-painter, was clearly held at Belvoir in 1613 
to be of inferior social rank to Shakespeare, the 
dramatist. The prefix * Mr.,' the accepted mark of 
gentihty, stands in the Earl of Rutland's account- 
book before the dramatist's name alone. According: 
to Sir Thomas Smith's * Commonwealth of England,' 
1594, * Master is the title which men give to esquires 
and other gentlemen.' 2 The dramatist enjoyed the 

1 Life and Letters of Sir Henry Wotton, by Logan Pearsall- 
Smith, Oxford, 1907, vol. ii. p. 17. 

2 Cf. Merchant of Venice, II. ii. 45 et seq., where Launcelot Gobbo, 



PREFACE TO THE NEW EDITION xxi 

right to that title since he obtained in 1599 from the 
College of Arms a recognition of his claim to a coat- 
of-arms and to the title of * gentleman.' It is worthy 
of notice, at the same time, that the respective ser- 
vices rendered to the Earl of Rutland by Shake- 
speare and his friend Burbage were reckoned of 
precisely the same pecuniary value. Each was re- 
munerated with 44 shillings ' in gold.' Payment was 
obviously made in the new gold pieces called 'jaco- 
buses,' each of which was worth about 22s. 

Abundant literary evidence is already accessible 
of Burbage's repute as a painter, in addition to the 
authentic specimen of his brush which belonged to 
Edward Alleyn, the actor and founder of Dulwich 
College, and may still be seen at the Dulwich College 
Gallery. But the financial statement among the 
Duke of Rutland's manuscripts shows the actor for 
the first time in the guise of a professional artist, who 
put his skill at the services of a noble patron in 
return for a money payment. That the result of 
Burbage's labour in * painting and making' the 
*impresa' which Shakespeare suggested to him was 
wholly satisfactory to the Earl of Rutland is amply 
proved. Another entry in the Duke of Rutland's 
household books brings to light that Burbage was 
employed on a like work by the earl three years 
later. On March 25, 16 16, the Earl again took part 

on being called Master Launcelot, persistently disclaims the dignity. 
* No master^ sir (he protests) , but a poor man's son.' 



Xxii WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

in a tilting-match at Court on the anniversary of 
James I's accession. On that occasion, too, his 
shield was entrusted to Burbage for armorial em- 
belHshment, and the actor-artist received for his new 
labour the enhanced remuneration of 4/. iSs. The 
entry runs : ' Paid given Richard Burbidg for my 
Lorde's shelde and for the embleance, 4/. 18s.' 
Shakespeare was no longer Burbage's associate, for 
a mournful reason. At the moment that the actor- 
painter earned this large reward, his lifelong associate, 
of whose greatest creations he was the original in- 
terpreter on the stage, lay on what proved to be his 
deathbed at Stratford-on-Avon. 



V 

The fifth 'new' reference to Shakespeare concerns 
his last year of life, and it sheds a new flicker of light 
on Shakespeare's experience as owner of property in 
Blackfriars where he bought a house two years be- 
fore. Mr. C. W. Wallace, a professor of the American 
University of Nebraska, discovered in the autumn of 
1905, at the Public Record Office in London, three 
previously unknown documents in a Chancery suit 
touching the ownership of lands and houses in Black- 
friars.^ In two of these official papers Shakespeare's 
name figures as that of plaintiff, together with six 

1 Full copies were printed in the London Standard newspaper on 
October 18, 1905, and again in Englische Stiidien for April 1906. 



PREFACE TO THE NEW EDITION xxill 

other persons, all of whom were of good social stand- 
ing. The papers belong to a subsidiary or comple- 
mental stage of some litigation of which the full 
story is still to seek. The earliest of the three 
'new' documents is dated April 26, 161 5 — one 
year lacking three days before the poet's death ; it is 
*a bill of complaint' or petition addressed to Sir 
Thomas Egerton, the Lord Chancellor, by 'Willyam 
Shakespere gent' (jointly with Sir Thomas Bendish, 
baronet, Edward Newport and WilHam Thoresbie, 
esquires, Robert Dormer, esquire, and Marie his 
wife and Richard Bacon, citizen of London); the 
Chancellor's 'orators' pray him to compel one Mat- 
thew Bacon to deliver up to them a number of 
'letters patent, deeds, evidences, charters and writ- 
ings,' which, it is alleged, are wrongfully detained by 
him and concern their title to various houses and 
lands 'within the precinct of Blackfriars in the City 
of London or county of Middlesex.' The second 
document, which is dated the 15th of May, is the 
answer of the defendant Matthew Bacon; he does 
not dispute the right of Shakespeare and the six 
other complainants to the property in question, and 
he admits that a collection of deeds came into his 
hands on the recent death of his mother; but he 
denies precise knowledge of their contents and all 
obhgation to part with them. The final document, 
which is dated the 22nd of May, is the decree of the 
court directing the surrender of the papers to Sir 



xxiv WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

Thomas Bendish, Edward Newport, and the other 
petitioners. The houses and lands involved in the 
dispute are sufficiently described for legal purposes ; 
but specific detail, which would render their exact 
sites identifiable, is wanting. It is uncertain whether 
Shakespeare were a party to the litigation in respect 
of property owned by the acting company at Black- 
friars Theatre, of which he was long a leading 
member and shareholder, or in regard to that house 
in the neighbourhood which he privately acquired in 
1613. But Mr. Wallace's discovery makes it clear 
that Shakespeare's retirement from the active busi- 
ness of life in his last years was less complete than 
has been hitherto assumed. He could not have been 
a party to this suit against Matthew Bacon without 
his specific consent and some active correspondence 

with his co-plaintiffs. 

Sidney Lee. 

February i, 1909. 



PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION 

This work is based on the article on Shakespeare 
which I contributed last year to the fifty-first volume 
of the 'Dictionary of National Biography.' But the 
changes and additions which the article has under- 
gone during my revision of it for separate publication 
are so numerous as to give the book a title to be 
regarded as an independent venture. In its general 
aims, however, the present life of Shakespeare en- 
deavours loyally to adhere to the principles that are 
inherent in the scheme of the * Dictionary of National 
Biography.' I have endeavoured to set before my 
readers a plain and practical narrative of the great 
dramatist's personal history as concisely as the needs 
of clearness and completeness would permit. I have 
sought to provide students of Shakespeare with a full 
record of the duly attested facts and dates of their 
master's career. I have avoided merely aesthetic 
criticism. My estimates of the value of Shakespeare's 
plays and poems are intended solely to fulfil the 
obligation that lies on the biographer of indicating 
succinctly the character of the successive labours 
which were woven into the texture of his hero's life. 



xxvi WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

^Esthetic studies of Shakespeare abound, and to in- 
crease their number is a work of supererogation. But 
Shakespearean literature, as far as it is known to me, 
still lacks a book that shall supply within a brief 
compass an exhaustive and well-arranged statement 
of the facts of Shakespeare's career, achievement, and 
reputation, that shall reduce conjecture to the smallest 
dimensions consistent with coherence, and shall give 
verifiable references to all the original sources of 
information. After studying Elizabethan literature, 
history, and bibliography for more than eighteen 
years, I believed that I might, without exposing my- 
self to a charge of presumption, attempt something 
in the way of filling this gap, and that I might be 
able to supply, at least tentatively, a guide-book to 
Shakespeare's life and work that should be, within 
its limits, complete and trustworthy. How far my 
belief was justified the readers of this volume will 
decide. 

I cannot promise my readers any startling revela- 
tions. But my researches have enabled me to remove 
some ambiguities which puzzled my predecessors, 
and to throw light on one or two topics that have 
hitherto obscured the course of Shakespeare's career. 
Particulars that have not been before incorporated 
in Shakespeare's biography will be found in my 
treatment of the following subjects : the condi- 
tions under which 'Love's Labour's Lost' and the 
' Merchant of Venice ' were written ; the references 



PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION xxvii 

in Shakespeare's plays to his native town and county ; 
his father's applications to the Heralds' College for 
coat-armour ; his relations with Ben Jonson and the 
boy-actors in 1601 ; the favour extended to his work 
by James I and his Court ; the circumstances which led 
to the publication of the First Folio, and the history 
of the dramatist's portraits. I have somewhat expanded 
the notices of Shakespeare's financial affairs which 
have already appeared in the article in the ' Dictionary 
of National Biography,' and a few new facts will be 
found in my revised estimate of the poet's pecuniary 
position. 

In my treatment of the sonnets I have pursued 
what I believe to be an original line of investiga- 
tion. The strictly autobiographical interpretation that 
critics have of late placed on these poems compelled 
me, as Shakespeare's biographer, to submit them to 
a very narrow scrutiny. My conclusion is adverse to 
the claim of the sonnets to rank as autobiographical 
documents, but I have felt bound, out of respect to 
writers from whose views I dissent, to give in detail 
the evidence on which I base my judgment. Matthew 
Arnold sagaciously laid down the maxim that 'the 
criticism which alone can much help us for the future 
is a criticism which regards Europe as being, for 
intellectual and artistic ^ purposes, one great con- 
federation, bound to a joint action and working to 

1 Arnold wrote ' spiritual,' but the change of epithet is needful to 
render the dictum thoroughly pertinent to the topic under consideration. 



xxviii WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

• 
a common result.' It is criticism inspired by this 

liberalising principle that is especially applicable to 
the vast sonnet-literature which was produced by 
Shakespeare and his contemporaries. It is criticism 
of the type that Arnold recommended that can alone 
lead to any accurate and profitable conclusion respect- 
ing the intention of the vast sonnet-literature of the 
Elizabethan era. In accordance with Arnold's sug- 
gestion, I have studied Shakespeare's sonnets com- 
paratively with those in vogue in England, France, 
and Italy at the time he wrote. I have endeavoured 
to learn the. view that was taken of such literary 
endeavours by contemporary critics and readers 
throughout Europe. My researches have covered a 
very small portion of the wide field. But I have gone 
far enough, I think, to justify the conviction that 
Shakespeare's collection of sonnets has no reasonable 
title to be regarded as a personal or autobiographical 
narrative. 

In the Appendix (Sections iii and iv) I have 
supplied a memoir of Shakespeare's patron, the Earl 
of Southampton, and an account of the Earl's rela- 
tions with the contemporary world of letters. Apart 
from Southampton's association with the sonnets, he 
promoted Shakespeare's welfare at an early stage of 
the dramatist's career, and I can quote the authority 
of Malone, who appended a sketch of Southampton's 
history to his biography of Shakespeare (in the 
'Variorum' edition of 1821), for treating a know- 



PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION xxix 

ledge of Southampton's life as essential to a full know- 
ledge of Shakespeare's. I have also printed in the 
Appendix a detailed statement of the precise circum- 
stances under which Shakespeare's sonnets were pub- 
lished by Thomas Thorpe in 1609 (Section v), and a 
review of the facts that seem to me to confute thq 
popular theory that Shakespeare was a friend and 
protege of William Herbert, third Earl of Pembroke, 
who has been put forward quite unwarrantably as the 
hero of the sonnets (Sections vi, vii, viii).^ I have 
also included in the Appendix (Sections ix and x) 
a survey of the voluminous sonnet-literature of the 
Elizabethan poets between 1591 and 1597, with which 
Shakespeare's sonnetteering efforts were very closely 
allied, as well as a bibliographical note on a corre- 
sponding feature of French and Italian literature 
between 1550 and 1600. 

Since the publication of the article on Shake- 
speare in the * Dictionary of National Biography,' I 
have received from correspondents many criticisms 
and suggestions which have enabled me to correct 
some errors. But a few of my correspondents 
have exhibited so ingenuous a faith in those forged 
documents relating to Shakespeare and forged 
references to his works, which were promulgated 

1 I have already published portions of the papers on Shakespeare's 
relations with the Earls of Pembroke and Southampton in the Fort- 
nightly Review (for February of this year) and in the Cornhill Magazine 
(for April of this year), and I have to thank the proprietors of those 
periodicals for permission to reproduce my material in this volume. 



XXX WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

chiefly by John Payne Collier more than half a 
century ago, that I have attached a list of the 
misleading records to my chapter on * The Sources 
of Biographical Information ' in the Appendix 
(Section i). I believe the list to be fuller than any 
to be met with elsewhere. 

The six illustrations which appear in this volume 
have been chosen on grounds of practical utility 
rather than of artistic merit. My reasons for sejecting 
as the frontispiece the newly discovered * Droeshout ' 
painting of Shakespeare (now in the Shakespeare 
Memorial Gallery at Stratford-on-Avon) can be 
gathered from the history of the painting and of its 
discovery which I give on pages 288-90. I have to 
thank Mr. Edgar Flower and the other members of 
the Council of the Shakespeare Memorial at Stratford 
for permission to reproduce the picture. The portrait 
of Southampton in early life is now at Welbeck 
Abbey, and the Duke of Portland not only per- 
mitted the portrait to be engraved for this volume, 
but lent me the negative from which the plate has 
been prepared. The Committee of the Garrick 
Club gave permission to photograph the interesting 
bust of Shakespeare in their possession,^ but, owing 
to the fact that it is moulded in black terra-cotta, 
no satisfactory negative could be obtained ; the 
engraving I have used is from a photograph of a 
white plaster cast of the original bust, now in the 

1 For an account of its history see p. 307. 



PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION xxxi 

Memorial Gallery at Stratford. The five auto- 
graphs of Shakespeare's signature — all that exist of 
unquestioned authenticity — appear in the three re- 
maining plates. The three signatures on the will have 
been photographed from the original document at 
Somerset House, by permission of Sir Francis Jeune, 
President of the Probate Court; the autograph on 
the deed of purchase by Shakespeare in 1613 of 
the house in Blackfriars has • been photographed 
from the original document in the Guildhall Library, 
by permission of the Library Committee of the City 
of London ; and the autograph on the deed of 
mortgage relating to the same property, also dated 
in 161 3, has been photographed from the original 
document in the British Museum, by permission of 
the Trustees. Shakespeare's coat-of-arms and motto, 
which are stamped on the cover of this volume, are 
copied from the trickings in the margin of the draft- 
grants of arms now in the Heralds' College. 

The Baroness Burdett-Coutts has kindly given me 
ample opportunities of examining the two peculiarly 
interesting and valuable copies of the First Folio ^ in 
her possession. Mr. Richard Savage, of Stratford-on- 
Avon, the Secretary of the Birthplace Trustees, and 
Mr. W. Salt Brassington, the Librarian of the Shake- 
speare Memorial at Stratford, have courteously replied 
to the many inquiries that I have addressed to them 
verbally or by letter. Mr. Lionel Cust, the Director 

1 See pp. 321 and 326. 



xxxii WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

of the National Portrait Gallery, has helped me to 
estimate the authenticity of Shakespeare's portraits. 
I have also benefited, while the work has been passing 
through the press, by the valuable suggestions of my 
friends the Rev. H. C. Beeching and Mr. W. J. Craig, 
and I have to thank Mr. Thomas Seccombe for the 
zealous aid he has 'rendered me while correcting the 
final proofs. 

October 12, 1898. * "~ 



CONTENTS 



PARENTAGE AND BIRTH 



Distribution of the name 
of Shakespeare . . . 

The poet's ancestry . . 

The poet's father . . , 

His settlement at Strat- 
ford 



PAGE 

The poet's mother ... 6 
1564, April. The poet's birth 

and baptism . . . ^ 8 

Alleged birthplace ... 8 



II 



CHILDHOOD, EDUCATION, AND MARRIAGE 



The father in municipal 

office 

Brothers and sisters . . 
The father's financial 

difficulties 

1571-7 Shakespeare's educa- 
tion 

His classical equipment 
Shakespeare's know- 

ledge of the Bible . . 
1575 Queen Elizabeth at 
Kenilworth .... 
1577 Withdrawal from school 



10 
II 

12 

13 
15 

17 

18 
18 



1582, Dec. The poet's mar- 

riage 19 

.Richard Hathaway of 

Shottery 19 

Anne Hathaway ... 20 
Anne Hathaway's 

cottage 20 

The bond against im- 
pediments 21 

1583, May. Birth of the poet's 

daughter Susanna . . 23 
Formal betrothal pro- 
bably dispensed with . 24 



xxxiu 



XXXIV 



WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 



III 



THE FAREWELL TO STRATFORD 



Early married life ... 26 

Poaching in Charlecote . 28 
Unwarranted doubts of 

the tradition .... 29 



Justice Shallow .... 30 
1585 The flight from Stratford 30 



IV 



ON THE LONDON STAGE 



1586 The journey to London . 32 
Richard Field, Shake- 
speare's townsman , . 33 
Theatrical employment . 33 
A playhouse servitor . . 35 
The acting companies . 35 
The Lord Chamberlain's 

company 36 

Shakespeare a member 
of the Lord Chamber- 
lain's company ... 37 



The London theatres . 37 
Place of residence in 

London 39 

Actors' provincial tours . 40 
Shakespeare's alleged 

travels .."... 41 

In Scotland 42 

In Italy 43 

Shakespeare's roles . . 44 
His alleged scorn of an 

actor's calling . . . 45 



EARLY DRAMATIC WORK 



1591 

159 1 

1592 
1592 
1592, 
1592., 



47 



49 
51 



The period of Shake- 
peare's dramatic 

work, 1591-1611. . . 

His borrowed plots . . 

The revision of plays . . 

Chronology of the plays . 

Metrical tests .... 

Love's Labour's Lost . . 

Two Gentlemen of 
Verona 54 

Comedy of Eri'ors ... 55 

Romeo and Juliet ... 56 

March. Henry W . . 58 

Sept. Greene's attack on 
Shakespeare .... 59 

Chettle's apology ... 60 

Divided authorship of 
Henry VI 61 

Shakespeare's coadjutors 62 

Shakespeare's assimi- 
lative power .... 63 

Lyly's influence in 
comedy 64 



IS93 
1593 



1593 

1594. 



1594 
1594. 



Marlowe's influence in 

tragedy 65 

Richard HI 65 

Richard H 67 

Shakespeare's acknow- 
ledgments to Marlowe 67 
Titus Androjiicus ... 68 
August. The Merchant 

of Venice 70 

Shylock and Rodeiigo 

Lopez 71 

King John 73 

Dec. 28. Co77iedy of 
Errors in Gray's Inn 

Hall 74 

Early plays doubtfully 
assigned to Shake- 

peare 75 

Ardet? of Feversham 

(1592) 75 

Edward HI 75 

Mucedorus 76 

Faire Em (1592) ... 77 



CONTENTS 



XXXV 



VI 



THE FIRST APPEAL TO THE READING PUBLIC 



1593, April. Publication of 

Venus and Adonis . . 78 

1584, May. Publication of 

Lucrece 80 



Enthusiastic reception of 

the poems 82 

Shakespeare and Spenser 83 

Patrons at Court ... 85 



VII 



THE SONNETS AND THEIR LITERARY HISTORY 



The vogue of the Eliza- 
bethan sonnet ... 87 

Shakespeare's first ex- 
periments 88 

1594 Majority of Shake- 
speare's sonnets com- 
posed 89 

Their literary value . . 91 

Circulation in manu- 
script ...... 92 

Their piratical publica- 
tion in 1609 .... 93 

A Lover s Complaint . . 95 

Thomas Thorpe and 
'Mr. W. H.' .... 95 

The form of Shake- 
speare's sonnets ... 99 

Their want of continuity 100 

The two 'groups' . . . 100 



Main topics of the first 
' group ' 102 

Main topics of the second 
' group ' 103 

The order of the sonnets 
in the edition of 1640 . 104 

Lack of genuine senti- 
ment in Elizabethan 
sonnets 104 

Their dependence on 
French and Italian 
models ...... 105 

Sonnetteers' admissions 
of insincerity .... 109 

Contemporary censure of 
sonnetteers' false senti- 
ment no 

Shakespeare's scornful 
allusions to sonnets in 
his plays in 



VIII 



THE BORROWED CONCEITS OF THE SONNETS 



Slender autobiographi- 
cal element in Shake- 
speare's sonnets . . . 

The imitative element . 

Shakespeare's claims of 
immortality for his 
sonnets a borrowed 
conceit 117 



113 
"3 



Conceits in sonnets ad- 
dressed to a woman . 122 

The praise of ' black- 
ness ' 122 

The sonnets of vitupera- 
tion 124 

Gabriel Harvey's Am- 
orous Odious sonnet . 125 

Jodelle's Contr' Amours . 126 



XXXVl 



WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 



IX 



THE PATRONAGE OF THE EARL OF SOUTHAMPTON 



Biographic fact in the 
' dedicatory ' sonnets . 

The Earl of South- 
ampton the poet's sole 
patron 

Rivals in Southampton's 
favour 134 

Shakespeare's fear of 
another poet .... 

Barnabe Barnes pro- 
bably the chief rival . 

Other theories as to the 
chief rival's identity 

Sonnets of friendship . . 

Extravagances of literary 
compliment .... 142 



129 



130 



136 

137 

138 
140 



PAGE 

Patrons habitually ad- 
dressed in affectionate 
terms 143 

Direct references to 
Southampton in the 
sonnets of friendship . 146 

His youthfulness . . . 147 

The evidence of por- 
traits 148 

Sonnet cvii the last of 
the series , . . . . 151 

Allusions to Queen 
Elizabeth's death . .151 

Allusion to South- 
ampton's release from 
prison 153 



X 



THE SUPPOSED STORY OF INTRIGUE IN THE SONNETS 



Sonnets of melancholy 
and self-reproach . . 155 

The youth's relations 
with the poet's mis- 
tress 157 



Willobie his Avisa 

(1594) 159 

Summary of conclu- 
sions respecting the 
sonnets 162 



XI 



THE DEVELOPMENT OF DRAMATIC POWER 



1594-5 Midsummer Night's 

Dream 165 

1595 All's Well that Ends 

Well 167 

1595 The Taiiiing of The 

Shrew 168 

Stratford al'iisians in the 

Induction 169 

Wincot 169 

1597 Henjy IV 172 

Falstaff 174 



1597 The Mer?y Wives of 

Windsor 177 

1598 Henry V 179 

Essex and the rebellion 

of 1601 181 

Shakespeare's popularity 

and inliuence . . . . 183 
Shakespeare's friendship 

with Ben jonson . . 183 

The Mermaid meetings . 184 

1598 Meres's eulogy .... 185 



CONTENTS 



XXXVll 



IS99 



Value of his name to 

publishers i86 

The Passionate Vilgrim . i88 



1601 The PhcKnix and the 

Turtle 190 



XII 



THE PRACTICAL AFFAIRS OF LIFE 



Shakespeare's practical 

temperament .... 192 

His father's difficulties . 193 

His wife's debt .... 194 

1596-9 The coat-ot-arms . . 195 

1597, May 4. The purchase of 

New Place .... 200 
1598 Fellow-townsmen appeal 

to Shakespeare for aid 202 
Shakespeare's financial 
position before 1599 . 203 



Shakespeare's financial 

position after 1599 . . 207 
His later income . . . 209 
Incomes of fellow-actors 210 
1601-1610 Shakespeare's for- 
mation of his estate at 

Stratford 211 

1605 The Stratford tithes . . 212 
1600-1609 Recovery of small 

debts 213 



XIII 



MATURITY OF GENIUS 



1599 

1599 
1600 
1 601 



160I 



Literary work in 1599 
Much Ado about 

Nothing 

As You Like It ... . 
Twelfth Night .... 
Julius CcBsar .... 
The strife between adult 

actors and boy-actors . 
Shakespeare's references 

to the struggle . . . 
Ben Jon son's Poetaster . 
Shakespeare's alleged 

partisanship in the 

theatrical warfare . . 



214 

215 
216 
217 
219 



223 
225 



227 



1602 Hamlet 228 

The problem of its 

publication .... 
The First Quarto, 1603 . 
The Second Quarto, 

1604 

The Folio version, 1623 . 
Popularity of Hamlet . . 

1603 Troilus atid Cressida . . 
Treatment of the theme . 

1603, March 24. Queen Eliza- 
beth's death «... 238 
James I's patronage . . 239 



230 
231 

231 
231 
232 
233 
235 



XIV 



THE HIGHEST THEMES OF TRAGEDY 



1604, Nov. Othello .... 243 
1604, Dec. Measure for Adea- 

sure 245 

1606 Macbeth 247 

1607 King Lear 249 



1608 


Timon of Athens . . 


. 251 


1608 


Pericles 


. 252 


1608 


Antony and Cleopatra . 


. 254 


1609 


Coriolanus .... 


. 255 



XXXVlll 



WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 



x6io 
1611 
1611 



XV 

THE LATEST PLAYS 



PAGE 
The placid temper of the 

latest plays .... 257 
Cyfnbeline ..... 258 
The Winter's Tale . . 260 
The Tempest .... 261 
Fanciful interpretations 

of The Tetiipest . . . 265 
Unfinished plays . . . 267 



PAGE 

The lost play of Car- 
denlo 267 

The Two Noble Kins- 
men 268 

Henry VIII 269 

The burning of the Globe 
Theatre 269 



XVI 

THE CLOSE OF LIFE 



Plays at Court in 1613 . 273 
Actor-friends .... 273 
161 1 Final settlement at 

Stratford 275 

Domestic aifairs . . . 275 

1613, March. Purchase of a 

house in Blackfriars . 276 

1614, Oct. Attempt to enclose 

the Stratford common 

fields 279 

1616, April 23. Shakespeare's 

death 280 



16 16, April 25. Shakespeare's 

burial 281 

The will 282 

Shakespeare's bequest to 

his wife 283 

Shakespeare's heiress . 284 
Legacies to friends . . 285 
The tomb in Stratford 

Church 286 

Shakespeare's personal 

character 286 



XVII 

SURVIVORS AND DESCENDANTS 



Mrs. Judith Quiney 
(1585-1662) .... 289 

Mrs. Susanna Hall 
(1583-1649) .... 290 



The last descendant . . 291 
Shakespeare's brothers, 
Edmutid, Richard, 
and Gilbert .... 292 



XVIII 

AUTOGRAPHS, PORTRAITS, AND MEMORIALS 



Extant specimens of 
Shakespeare's hand- 
writing 293 

His mode of writing . . 294 
The poet's spelling of 

his surname .... 294 
' Shakespeare ' the ac- 
cepted form .... 295 
Shakespeare's portraits . 297 
The Stratford bust . . . 298 
The 'Stratford' portrait . 298 
Droeshout's engraving . 299 



paint- 



The ' Droeshout 
ing 

Later portraits . . . 
The ' Chandos ' portrait 
The ' Jansen ' portrait 
The ' Felton ' portrait 
The ' Soest ' portrait . 

Miniatures 306 

The Garrick Club bust . 307 
Alleged death-mask . . 307 
Memorials in sculpture . 308 
Memorials at Stratford . 309 



300 
303 
303 
305 
30s 
306 



CONTENTS 



XXXIX 



XIX 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 



Editions of the poems in 

the poet's hfetime . . 311 
Posthumous quartos of 

the poems 312 

The ' Poems ' of 1640 . 312 
Editions of the plays in 

the poet's lifetime . . 313 
Posthumous quartos of 

the plays 314 



1623 The First Folio 

The publishing syndi- 
cate 

The prefatory matter , . 

The value of the text . . 

The order of the plays . 

The typography .... 

Irregular copies . . . 

The Sheldon copy . . . 

Jaggard's presentation 
copy of the First Folio 323 

Estimated number of ex- 
tant copies 326 

Reprints of the First 
Folio 327 



315 

31S 
318 
319 
320 
320 
320 
321 



1632 The Second Folio 
1663-4 The Third Folio , 
1685 The Fourth Folio 
Eighteenth-century 

tors 

Nicholas Rowe (1674 
1718) 



edi- 



327 
328 
328 

328 

329 



PAGE 

Alexander Pope (1688- 

1744) 330 

Lewis Theobald (1688- 

1744) 331 

Sir Thomas Hanmer 

(1677-1746) .... 333 
Bishop Warburton 

(1698-1779) .... 334 
Dr. Johnson (1709-1783) 334 
Edward Capell (1713- 

1781) 334 

George Steevens (1736- 

1800) 335 

Edmund Malone (1741- 

1812) 337 

Variorum editions . . . 337 
Nineteenth-century edi- 
tors 338 

Alexander Dyce (1798- 

1869) 339 

Howard Staunton (1810- 

1874) 339 

Nikolaus Delius (1813- 

1888) 339 

The Cambridge edition 

(1863-6) 339 

The Bankside edition . 339 
Other nineteenth-century 

editions ...... 340 



XX 



POSTHUMOUS REPUTATION 



Views of Shakespeare's 

contemporaries . . . 342 
Ben Jonson's tribute . . 343 
English opinion between 

1660 and 1702 . . . 345 
Dryden's view .... 346 
Restoration adaptations . 347 
English opinion from 

1702 onwards .... 348 
Stratford festivals . . . 350 
Shakespeare on the Eng- 
lish stage 350 



The first appearance of 
actresses in Shake- 
spearean parts . , .351 

David Garrick (1717- 

1779) 352 

John Philip Kemble 

(1757-1823) .... 353 
Mrs. Sarah Siddons 

(1755-1831) .... 354 
Edmund Kean (1787- 
1833) 354 



xl 



WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 



PAGE 

William Charles Mac- 
ready (1793-1873) . . 355 
Recent revivals . . . .355 
Shakespeare in English 

music and art . . . 357 
Boydell's Shakespeare 

Gallery 357 

Shakespeare in America 358 

Translations 358 

Shakespeare in Germany 358 
German translations . . 360 
Modern German critics . 362 
Shakespeare on the 
German stage . . . 363 



PAGE 

Shakespeare in France . 364 
Voltaire's strictures . . 365 
French critics' gradual 
emancipation from Vol- 
tairean influence . . 366 
Shakespeare on the 

French stage .... 368 
Shakespeare m Italy . . 369 

In Holland 370 

In Russia 370 

In Poland 370 

In Hungary 371 

In other countries . . . 371 



XXI 

GENERAL ESTIMATE 



General estimate . . . 372 
Shakespeare's defects . 372 



Character of Shake- 
speare's achievement . 373 
Its universal recognition 374 



APPENDIX 
I 



THE SOURCES OF BIOGRAPHICAL KNOWLEDGE 



Contemporary records 

abundant 377 

First efforts in biography 377 
Biographers of the nine- 
teenth century . . . 378 
Stratford topography . . 379 
Specialised studies in 

biography 380 

Epitomes 380 

Aids to study of plots 

and text ...... 380 



Concordances .... 380 
Bibliographies .... 381 
Critical studies .... 381 
Shakespearean forgeries 381 
John Jordan (1746-1 809) 382 
The Ireland lorgeries 

(1796) 382 

List of forgeries promul- 
gated by Collier and 
others (1835-1849) . . 383 



II 



THE BACON-SHAKESPEARE CONTROVERSY 



Its source 386 

Sir Tobie Matthew's 

letter of 1621 .... 387 
Chief exponents of the 

theory 388 



Its vogue in America . 388 
Extent of the literature . 389 
Absurdity of the theory . 389 



Appendix] 



CONTENTS 



xli 



III 



THE YOUTHFUL CAREER OF THE EARL OF SOUTHAMPTON 



PAGE 

Shakespeare and South- 
ampton 390 

Southampton's parent- 
age 390 

1573, Oct. 6. Southampton's 

birth 391 

His education .... 391 

Recognition of South- 
ampton's beauty in 
youth 393 



1598 



PAGE 

His reluctance to marry 394 
Intrigue with Elizabeth 

Vernon 395 

Southampton's marriage 395 



1601-3 Southampton's 

prisonment .... 396 

Later career 396 

1624, Nov. 10. His death . . 397 



IV 



THE EARL OF SOUTHAMPTON AS A LITERARY PATRON 



Southampton's collec- 
tion of books .... 398 

References in his letters 
to poems and plays . . 398 

His love of the theatre . 399 

Poetic adulation . . . 400 
1593 Barnabe Barnes's sonnet 400 



Tom Nash's addresses . 401 
1595 Gervase Markham's son- 
net 403 

1598 Florio's address . . . 403 
The congratulations of 

the poets in 1603 . . 404, 
Elegies on Southampton 405 



V 



THE TRUE HISTORY OF THOMAS THORPE AND 'MR. W. H.* 



The publication of the 
' Sonnets ' in 1609 . . 

The text of the dedica- 
tion 

Publishers' dedications . 

Thorpe's early life . . . 

His ownership of the 
manuscript of Mar- 
lowe's Lucan .... 

His dedicatory address 
to Edward Blount in 
1600 

Character of his business 

Shakespeare's sufferings 
at publishers' hands . 

The use of initials in 



406 



407 



409 



409 



410 
411 

412 



dedications of Eliza- 
bethan and Jacobean 
books 413 

Frequency of wishes for 
' happiness ' and ' eter- 
nity ' in dedicatory 
greetings 414 

Five dedications by 
Thorpe 415 

' W. H." signs dedica- 
tion of Southwell's 
' Poems ' 416 

'W. H.' and Mr. Wil- 
liam Hall 418 

The ' onlie begetter ' 
means ' only procurer ' 419 



xlii 



WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 



[Appendix 



VI 



MR. WILLIAM HERBERT' 



Origin of the notion that 
' Mr. W. H.' stands 
for William Herbert . 422 

The Earl of Pembroke 



known only as Lord 
Herbert in youth . . 423 
Thorpe's mode of ad- 
dressing tlie Earl of 
Pembroke 424 



VII 



SHAKESPEARE AND THE EARL OF PEMBROKE 



Shakespeare with the 
acting company at 

Wilton in 1603 . . , 427 

The dedication of the 

First Folio in 1623 . . 428 

No suggestion in the 

' Sonnets ' of the 



youth's identity with 

Pembroke 429 

Aubrey's ignorance of 
any relation between 
Shakespeare and 
Pembroke 431 



VIII 



THE 'WILL' SONNETS 



Elizabethan meanings 

of ' will ' 432 

Shakespeare's uses of 

the word 433 

Shakespeare's puns on 

the word 434 

Arbitrary and irregular 

use of italics by Eiiza- 



IX 



bethan and Jacobean 

printers 435 

The conceits of Sonnets 

cxxxv-vi interpreted . 436 
Sonnet cxxxv .... 437 
Sonnet cxxxvi .... 439 
Sonnet cxxxiv .... 441 
Sonnet cxliii . . . . .4.12 



THE VOGUE OF THE ELIZABETHAN SONNET, 159I-IS97 



1557 Wyatt's and Surrey's 

sonnets published . . 443 

1582 Watson's Centurie of 

Love 444 

1591 Sidney's Jistrophel and 

Stella 444 

L Collected sonnets of 

feigned love .... 445 

1592 Daniel's Delia .... 446 



1592 
1593 
1593 

IS93 
1593 
1594 
1594 



Fame of Daniel's sonnets 447 
Constable's Z)z'a«a. . . 447 
Barnabe Barnes's sonnets 448 
Watson's Tears of 

Fancie 449 

449 
449 
450 
451 



Giles Fletcher's Licia 
Lodge's Phillis . . 
Drayton's Idea . . 
Percy's Cozlia . . 



Appendix] 



CONTENTS 



xliii 



PAGE 

1594 T^epheria 451 

1595 Barnfield's sonnets to 

Ganymede 451 

1595 Spenser's Amoretti . .451 

1595 Emaricdulfe 452 

^595 Sir John Davies's 

Gulling e Sonnets . .452 

1596 Linche's Diella .... 453 
1596 Griffin's Fidessa . . . 453 
1596 Thomas Campion's 

sonnets 453 

1596 William Smith's Chloris 453 



PAGE 

1597 Robert Tofte's Z,flwra . . 454 
Sir William Alexander's 

Aurora 454 

Sir Fulke Greville's 

Ccelica 454 

Estimate of number of 
love-sonnets issued be- 
tween 1591 and 1597 . 455 
II. Sonnets to patrons, 1591- 

1597 • • 456 

III. Sonnets on philosophy 

and religion .... 456 



X 



BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE ON THE SONNET IN FRANCE, 1550-160O 



Ronsard (1524-1585) and 
' La Pleiade ' . . . . 458 

The Italian sonnetteersof 
the sixteenth century 458;? 

Philippe Desportes 

(1546-1606) .... 459 

Chief collections of 



French sonnets pub- 
lished between 1550 

and 1584 460 

Minor collections of 
French sonnets pub- 
lished between 1553 
and 1605 ...... 460 



Index 



463 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 



WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE . . . . . Frontispiece ^ 

Frotn the ^ Droeshout' painting, noiv in the Shake- 
speare Memorial Gallery, Sir at/ord-on- Avon. 

HENRY WRIOTHESLEY, Third Earl of 

Southampton, as a young man . . . To face p. 149 / 

From the pai7iting at Welheck Abbey, 

SHAKESPEARE'S AUTOGRAPH-SIGNATURE 
to the purchase-deed of a house in 
Blackfriars, dated March 10, 161 2-3 . . " 276 

Frofn the original document now preserved in the 
Guildhall Library, London. 

SHAKESPEARE'S AUTOGRAPH-SIGNATURE 

TO A MORTGAGE-DEED RELATING TO THE 
HOUSE PURCHASED BY HIM in BlACKFRIARS, 

DATED March ii, 161 2-3 " 278 

From, the original documetit now preserved in the 
British Mnseum. 

THREE AUTOGRAPH-SIGNATURES sever- 
ally WRITTEN BY SHAKESPEARE ON THE THREE 
SHEETS OF HIS WILL " 282 -^ 

From the original docujnent at Somerset House, 
London. 

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE " 307 / 

From, a plaster-cast of the terra-cotta btcst now in the 
possession of the Garrick Club. ' 

CONTEMPORARY INSCRIPTION in Jaggard's 

PRESENTATION COPY OF THE FiRST FOLIO . . />. 323 

J\l'ow belonging to Mf- Coningsby Sibthorp. 



xlv 



WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 



PARENTAGE AND BIRTH 

Shakespeare came of a family whose surname was 
borne through the middle ages by residents in very 

many parts of England — at Penrith in 
tion of the Cumberland, at Kirkland and Doncaster in 

Yorkshire, as well as in nearly all the 
midland counties. The surname had originally a 
martial significance, implying capacity in the wield- 
ing of the spear.i Its first recorded holder is 
William Shakespeare or * Sakspere,' who was con- 
victed of robbery and hanged in 1248;^ he belonged 
to Clapton, a hamlet in the hundred of Kiftergate, 
Gloucestershire (about seven miles south of Strat- 
ford-on-Avon). The second recorded holder of the 
surname is John Shakespeare, who in 1279 was living 
at * Freyndon,' perhaps Frittenden, Kent.^ The great 
mediaeval guild of St. Anne at Knowle, whose members 
included the leading inhabitants of Warwickshire, was 
joined by many Shakespeares in the fifteenth century.* 

^Camden, RemaineSj^d. 1605, p. ill; Yer?,\.egz.n, Restitution, 1605. 
2 Assize rolls for Gloucestershire, 32 Henry III, roll 274. 
^ Flac. Cor. 7 Edw. I, Kane; of. Notes and Queries, 1st ser. xi. 122. 
* Cf. the Register of the Guild of St. Anne at Knowle, ed. Bickley, 
1894. 



2 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the sur- 
name is found far more frequently in Warwickshire 
than elsewhere. The archives of no less than twenty- 
four towns and villages there contain notices of 
Shakespeare families in the sixteenth century, and 
as many as thirty-four Warwickshire towns or villages 
were inhabited by Shakespeare families in the seven- 
teenth century. Among them all William was a 
common Christian name. At Rowington, twelve 
miles to the north of Stratford, and in the same 
hundred of Barlichway, one of the most prolific 
Shakespeare families of Warwickshire resided in the 
sixteenth century, and no less than three Richard 
Shakespeares of Rowington, whose extant wills were 
proved respectively in 1560, 1591, and 16 14, were 
fathers of sons called William. At least one other 
William Shakespeare was during the period a resi- 
dent in Rowington. As a consequence, the poet has 
been more than once credited with achievements 
which rightly belong to one or other of his numerous 
contemporaries who were identically named. 

The poet's ancestry cannot be defined with abso- 
lute certainty. The poet's father, when applying for 
The poet's ^ grant of arms in 1596, claimed that his 
ancestry. grandfather (the poet's great-grandfather) 
received for services rendered in war a grant of land 
in Warwickshire from Henry VI I. ^ No precise con- 
firmation of this pretension has been discovered, and 
it may be, after the manner of heraldic genealogy, 
fictitious. But there is a probability that the poet 

1 See p. 196. 



J 



PARENTAGE AND BIRTH 3 

came of good yeoman stock, and that his ancestors to 
the fourth or fifth generation were fairly substantial 
landowners.^ Adam Shakespeare, a tenant by military 
service of land at Baddesley Clinton in 1389, seems 
to have been great-grandfather of one Richard Shake- 
speare who held land at Wroxhall in Warwickshire 
during the first thirty-four years (at least) of the 
sixteenth century. Another Richard Shakespeare 
who is conjectured to have been nearly akin to the 
Wroxhall family was settled as a farmer at Snitter- 
field, a village four miles to the north of Stratford- 
on-Avon, in 1528.^ It is probable that he was the 
poet's grandfather. In 1550 he was renting a mes- 
suage and land at Snitterfield of Robert Arden ; 
he died at the close of 1560, and on February 10 of 
the next year letters of administration of his goods, 
chattels, and debts were issued to his son John by 
the Probate Court at Worcester. His goods were 
valued at 35/. 17^".^ Besides the son John, Richard 
of Snitterfield certainly had a son Henry ; while a 
Thomas Shakespeare, a considerable landholder at 

1 Cf. Times, October 14, 1895; Notes and Queries, 8th ser. vi-ii. 
501; articles by Mrs. Stopes in Genealogical Magazine, 1897. 

2 Cf. Halliwell-Phillipps, Outlines of the Life of Shakespeare, 1887, 
ii. 207. 

^ The purchasing power of money was then eight times what it is 
now, and this and other sums mentioned should be multiplied by eight 
in comparing them with modern currency (see p. 204 n^. The letters of 
administration in regard to Richard Shakespeare's estate are in the dis- 
trict registry of the Probate Court at Worcester, and were printed in full 
by Mr. Halliwell-Phillipps in his Shakespeare' s Tours (privately issued 
1887), pp. 44-5. They do not appear in any edition of Mr. Halliwell- 
Phillipps's Outlijtes, Certified extracts appeared in Alotes and Queries^ 
8th ser. xii. 463-4. 



4 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

Snitterfield between 1563 and 1583, whose parentage 
is undetermined, may have been a third son. The son 
Henry remained all his life at Snitterfield, where he 
engaged in farming with gradually diminishing success ; 
he died in embarrassed circumstances in December 
1596. John, the son who administered Richard's 
estate, was in all likelihood the poet's father. 

About 155 1 John Shakespeare left Snitterfield, 
which was his birthplace, to seek a career in the 
The poet's neighbouring borough of Stratf ord-gn-Avon. 
father. There he soon set up as a trader in all 
manner of agricultural produce. Corn, wool, malt, 
meat, skins, and leather were among the commodities 
in which he dealt. Documents of a somewhat later 
date often describe him as a glover. Aubrey, Shake- 
speare's first biographer, reported the tradition that he 
was a butcher. But though both designations doubt- 
less indicated important branches of his business, 
neither can be regarded as disclosing its full extent. 
The land which his family farmed at Snitterfield 
supplied him with his varied stock-in-trade. As long 
as his father lived he seems to have been a frequent 
visitor to Snitterfield, and, like his father and brothers, 
he was until the date of his father's death occasionally 
designated a farmer or ' husbandman ' of that place. 
But it was with Stratford-on-Avon that his life was 
mainly identified. 

In April 1552 he was living there in Henley Street, 
a thoroughfare leading to the market town of Henley- 
in-Arden, and he is first mentioned in the borough 
records as paying in that month a fine of twelve- 



PARENTAGE AND BIRTH 5 

pence for having a dirt-heap in front of his house. 

His frequent appearances in the years that follow as 

either plaintiff or defendant in suits heard 

His settle- . , f , ^ , - , 

ment at m the local court of record for the recovery 
of small debts suggest that he was a keen man 
of business. In early life he prospered in trade, and 
in October 1556 purchased two freehold tenements at 
Stratford — one, with a garden, in Henley Street (it 
adjoins that now known as the poet's birthplace), and 
the other in Greenhill Street with a garden and croft. 
Thenceforth he played a prominent part in municipal 
affairs. In 1557 he was elected an ale-taster, whose 
duty it was to test the quality of malt liquors and 
bread. About the same time he was elected a burgess 
or town councillor, and in September 1558, and again 
on October 6, 1559, he was appointed one of the 
four petty constables by a vote of the jury of the 
court-leet. Twice — in 1 5 59 and 1 561— he was chosen 
one of the affeerors — officers appointed to determine 
the fines for those offences which were punishable 
arbitrarily, and for which no express penalties were 
prescribed by statute. In 1561 he was elected one 
of the two chamberlains of the borough, an office 
of responsibility which he held for two ;^ears. He 
delivered his second statement of accounts to the cor- 
poration in January 1564. When attesting docu- 
ments he occasionally niade his mark, but there is 
evidence in the Stratford archives that he could write 
with facility ; and he was credited with financial apti- 
tude. The municipal accounts, which were checked 
by tallies and counters, were audited by him after he 



6 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

ceased to be chamberlain, and he more than once 
advanced small sums of money to the corporation. 
He was reputed a man of cheerful temperament and 
a lover of a jest. 

With characteristic shrewdness he chose a wife of 
assured fortune — Mary, youngest daughter of Robert 
Arden, a wealthy farmer of Wilmcote in the parish of 
Aston Cantlowe, near Stratford. The Arden family 
The poet's '^^ its chicf branch, which was settled at Park- 
mother. \i^l\^ Warwickshire, ranked with the most 
influential of the county. Robert Arden, a progenitor 
of that branch, was sheriff of Warwickshire and 
Leicestershire in 1438 (16 Hen. VI), and this sheriff's 
direct descendant, Edward Arden, who was himself 
high sheriff of Warwickshire in 1575, was executed 
in 1583 for alleged complicity in a Roman Catholic 
plot against the life of Queen Elizabeth. John 
Shakespeare's wife belonged to a humbler branch of 
the family, and there is no trustworthy evidence to 
determine the exact degree of kinship between the 
two branches. Her grandfather, Thomas Arden, pur- 
chased in 1 501 an estate at Snitterfield, which passed, 
with other property, to her father Robert ; John 
Shakespeare's father, Richard, was one of this Robert 
Arden's Snitterfield tenants. By his first wife, whose 
name is not known, Robert Arden had seven daughters, 
of whom all but two married ; John Shakespeare's wife 
seems to have been the youngest. Robert Arden's 
second wife, Agnes or Anne, widow of John Hill 
(d. 1545), a substantial farmer of Bearley, survived 
him ; but by her he had no issue. When he died at 
the end of 1556, he owned a farmhouse at Wilmcote 



PARENTAGE AND BIRTH / 

and many acres, besides some hundred acres at 
Snitterfield, with two farmhouses which he let out 
to tenants. The post-mortem inventory of his goods, 
which was made on December 9, 1556, shows that 
he had Hved in comfort; his house was adorned 
by as many as eleven * painted cloths,' which then 
did duty for tapestries among the middle class. 
The exordium of his will, which was drawn up on 
November 24, 1556, and proved on December 16 
following, indicates that he was an observant Catholic. 
For his two youngest daughters, Alice and Mary, he 
showed especial affection by nominating them his 
executors. Mary received not only 6/. I3.r. 4d. in 
money, but the fee-simple of Asbies, his chief pro- 
perty at Wilmcote, consisting of a hpuse with some 
fifty acres of land. She also acquired, under an 
earlier settlement, an interest in two messuages at 
Snitterfield.^ But, although she was well provided 
with worldly goods, she was apparently without educa- 
tion ; several extant documents bear her mark, and 
there is no proof that she could sign her name. 

John Shakespeare's marriage with Mary Arden 
doubtless took place at Aston Cantlowe, the parish 
church of Wilmcote, in the autumn of 1557 (the 
church registers begin at a later date). On Septem- 
ber 15, 1558, his first child, a daughter, Joan, was 
baptised in the church of Stratford. A second child, 
another daughter, Margaret, was baptised on Decem- 
ber 2, 1562 ; but both these children died in infancy. 
The poet William, the first son and third child, was 

1 Halliwell-Phillipps, ii. 179. 



8 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

born on April 22 or 23, 1564. The latter date is 
generally accepted as his birthday, mainly (it would 
, appear) on the ground that it was the day 
birth and of his death. There is no positive evidence 
on the subject, but the Stratford parish 
registers attest that he was baptised on April 26. 

Some doubt is justifiable as to the ordinarily 
accepted scene of his birth. Of two adjoining houses 
Aiiecred forming a detached building on the north 
birthplace, gj^e of Henley Street, that to the east was 
purchased by John Shakespeare in 1556, but there is 
no evidence that he owned or occupied the house to 
the west before 1575. Yet this western house has 
been known since 1759 as the poet's birthplace, and 
a room on the first floor is claimed as that in which 
he was born.^ The two houses subsequently came 
by bequest of the poet's granddaughter to the family 
of the poet's sister, Joan Hart, and while the eastern 
tenement was let out to strangers for more than 
two centuries, and by them converted into an inn, 
the 'birthplace' was until 1806 occupied by the 
Harts, who latterly carried on there the trade of 
butcher. The fact of its long occupancy by the 
poet's collateral descendants accounts for the identi- 
fication of the western rather than the eastern tene- 
ment with his birthplace. Both houses (with some 
adjoining buildings which were demolished) were pur- 
chased in behalf of subscribers to a public fund on 
September 16, 1847, and, after extensive restoration, 
were converted into a single domicile for the purposes 

1 Cf. Halliwell-Phillipps, Letter to Elze, 1888. 



PARENTAGE AND BIRTH 9 

of a public museum and library. Much of the Eliza- 
bethan timber and stonework survives, but a cellar 
under the ' birthplace ' is the only portion which 
remains as it was at the date of the poet's birth. ^ 
The birthplace buildings were presented under a 
deed of trust to the corporation of Stratford in 1866. 
In 1891 an Act of ParHament transferred the pro- 
perty to an independent body, consisting of ten life- 
trustees, together with a number of ex-officio trustees, 
who are representative of the authorities of the 
county of Warwickshire and of the town of Strat- 
ford. 

1 Cf. Documents and Sketches in Halliwell-Phillipps, i. 377-99. 



10 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 



II 

CHILDHOOD, EDUCATION, AND MARRIAGE 

In July 1564, when William was three months old, 
the plague raged with unwonted vehemence at Strat- 
ford, and his father liberally contributed to 
in munici- the relief of its poverty-stricken victims. 
^ ° ' Fortune still favoured him. On July 4, 1565, 
he reached the dignity of an alderman. From 1 567 
onwards he was accorded in the corporation archives 
the honourable prefix of 'Mr.' At Michaelmas 1568 
he attained the highest office in the corporation gift, 
that of bailiff, and during his year of office the corpo- 
ration for the first time entertained actors at Stratford. 
The Queen's Company and the Earl of Worcester's 
Company each received from John Shakespeare an 
official welcome.^ On September 5, 1 571, he was chief 

1 This was in accord with the elder Shakespeare's reputed gaiety of 
heart. Late in life he impressed a visitor to his shop as a ' merry 
cheekd old man,' remarking of his son, ' W^ill is a good honest fellow, 
but I dare crack a jest with him at any time.' Both father and son 
were clearly credited with quickness of repartee. (Cf, MS. anecdote, 
recorded about 1660, in a pocket-book by Dr. Thomas Plume, now 
among Plume's papers in the library he founded at Maldon, Essex; 
communicated by the Rev. Andrew Clark.) The Rev. Thomas Carter, 
in Shakespeare, Puritan and Recusant, 18.97, weakly argued that 
John Shakespeare was a puritan from the fact that the corporation 
ordered images to be defaced (1562-3) and ecclesiastical vestments to 



CHILDHOOD, EDUCATION, AND MARRIAGE II 

alderman, a post which he retained till September 30 the . 
following year. In 1573 Alexander Webbe, the hus- 
band of his wife's sister Margaret, made him overseer 
of his will; in 1575 he bought two houses in Stratford, 
one of them doubtless the alleged birthplace in Henley 
Street; in 1576 he contributed twelvepence to the 
beadle's salary. But after Michaelmas 1572 he took 
a less active part in municipal affairs ; he grew 
irregular in his attendance at the council meetings, 
and signs were soon apparent that his luck had 
turned. In 1578 he was unable to pay, with his 
colleagues, either the sum of fourpence for the relief 
of the poor or his contribution * towards the furniture 
of three pikemen, two bellmen, and one archer ' who 
were sent by the corporation to attend a muster of the 
trained bands of the county. 

Meanwhile his family was increasing. Four chil- 
dren besides the poet — three sons, Gilbert (baptised 
Brothers Octobcr 1 3, 1 566), Richard (baptised March 
and sisters, j j^ ^^^^-^^ ^^^ Edmund (baptised May 3, 

1580), with a daughter Joan (baptised April 15, 1569) 
— reached maturity. A daughter Ann was baptised 
September 28, 1571, and was buried on April 4, 1579. 
To meet his growing liabilities, the father borrowed 
money from his wife's kinsfolk, and he and his wife 

be sold (1571). These were mere acts of conformity with the new 
ecclesiastical law. John Shakespeare's encouragement of actors is con- 
clusive proof that he was no puritan. The Elizabethan puritans, too, 
according to Guillim's Disp/ay of I/era/cfrie (i6io), regarded coat- 
armour with abhorrence, yet John Shakespeare with his son made per- 
sistent application to the College of Arms for a grant of arms. (Cf. 
i;i/ra, pp. 195 seq.) 



12 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

mortgaged, on November 14, 1578, Asbies, her 
valuable property at Wilmcote, for 40/. to Edmund 
Lambert of Barton-on-the-Heath, who had married 
her sister, Joan Arden, Lambert was to receive no 
interest on his loan, but was to take the * rents and 
profits ' of the estate. Asbies was thereby alienated 
for ever. Next year, on October 15, 1579, John and 
his wife made over to Robert Webbe, doubtless a 
relative of Alexander Webbe, for the sum apparently 
of 40/., his wife's property at Snitterfield.^ 

John Shakespeare obviously chafed under the 
humiliation of having parted, although as he hoped 
The only temporarily, with his wife's property of 

financial Asbics, and in the autumn of 1 580 he offered 
difficulties. -j-Q pa^y Qff ^-^Q mortgage ; but his brother-in- 
law, Lambert, retorted that other sums were owing, 
and he would accept all or none. The negotiation, 
which was the beginning of much litigation, thus 
proved abortive. Through 1585 and 1586 a creditor, 
John Brown, was embarrassingly importunate, and, 
after obtaining a writ of distraint. Brown informed 
the local court that the debtor had no goods on which 
distraint could be levied.'^ On September 6, 1586, 
John was deprived of his alderman's gown, on the 
ground of his long absence from the council meetings.^ 

1 The sum is stated to be 4/. in one document (Halliwell-Phillipps, 
ii. 176) and 40/. in another (id. p. 179); the latter is more likely to be 
correct. ^ 3. ii. 238. 

^ Efforts recently made to assign the embarrassments of Shake- 
speare's father to another John Shakespeare of Stratford deserve little 
attention. The second John Shakespeare or Shakspere (as his name is 
usually spelt) came to Stratford as a young man in 1584, and was for ten 
years a well-to-do shoemaker in Bridge Street, filling the office of Master 



CHILDHOOD, EDUCATION, AND MARRIAGE 13 

Happily John Shakespeare was at no expense for 
the education, of his four sons. They were entitled to 
free tuition at the grammar school of Stratford, which 
was reconstituted on a mediaeval foundation by Ed- 
ward VI. The eldest son, William, probably 

Education. 11. 1 Stt 1 

entered the school m 1571, when Walter 
Roche was retiring from the mastership in favour of 
Simon Hunt, B.A. Hunt seems to have been suc- 
ceeded in 1577 by one Thomas Jenkins, whose place 
was taken in 1579 by John Cottom of London.^ As 
was customary in provincial schools, the poet learned 
to write the ' Old English ' character, which resembles 
that still in vogue in Germany. He was never taught 
the Italian script, which was winning its way in cul- 
tured society, and is now universal among Englishmen. 
Until his death Shakespeare's ' Old English ' hand- 
writing testified to his provincial education.^ The 
general instruction was conveyed in Latin. From 
the Latin accidence, boys of the period, at schools of 
the type of that at Stratford, were led, through conver- 
sation books like the * Sententiae Pueriles ' and Lily's 
grammar, to the perusal of such authors as Seneca, 
Terence, Cicero, Virgil, Plautus, Ovid, and Horace. 
The eclogues of the popular renaissance poet, Man- 
tuanus, were often preferred to Virgil's for beginners. 
The rudiments of Greek were occasionally taught 
in EHzabethan grammar schools to very promising 
pupils ; but such coincidences as have been detected 

of the Shoemakers' Company in 1592 — a certain sign of pecuniary 

stability. He left Stratford in 1594 (cf. Halliwell-Phillipps, ii. 137-40). 

^ Gray's Shakespeare's Marriage, p. 108. ^ See p. 294. 



14 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

between expressions in Greek plays and in Shake- 
speare seem due to accident, and not to any study, 
either at school or elsewhere, of the Athenian drama.^ 

1 James Russell Lowell, who noticed some close parallels between 
expressions of Shakespeare and those of the Greek tragedians, hazarded 
the suggestion that Shakespeare may have studied the ancient drama in 
a Greece et Latine edition. I believe Lowell's parallelisms to be 
no more than curious accidents — proofs of consanguinity of spirit, 
not of any indebtedness on Shakespeare's part. In the Electra of 
Sophocles, which is akin in its leading motive to Hamlet, the Chorus 
consoles Electra for the supposed death of Orestes with the same com- 
monplace argument as that with which Hamlet's mother and uncle seek 
to console him. In Electra are the lines 1171-3: 

Sj'tjtoO 7r4(pvKas TrarpSs, 'HX^/crpa, (pp6v€i • 
QvT]Tbs 8' 'Opearrjs ' were /nrj Xlav arive. 
Jiacnv yap tj/up tovt dcpeiXerai iradetv 

(j.e. * Remember, Electra, your father whence you sprang is mortal- 
Mortal, too, is Orestes. Wherefore grieve not overmuch, for by all of 
us has this debt of suffering to be paid '). In Hamlet (i. ii. 72 seq.) are 
the familiar sentences : 

Thou know'st 'tis common; all that live must die. . . . 
But you must know, your father lost a father; 
That father lost, lost his , . . But to persever 
In obstinate condolement is a course 
Of impious stubbornness. 

Cf. Sophocles's CEdipus Coloneus, 880 : Tois rot dcKaiois xw ^pax^^ viKq. 
ixiyav ('In a just cause the weak vanquishes the strong,' Jebb), and 
2 Henry VI, iii. 233, 'Thrice is he armed that hath his quarrel just.' 
Shakespeare's ' prophetic soul ' in Hamlet (i. v. 40) and the Sojineis (cvii. 
i) may be matched by the TrpbjxavTLS dvfxos of Euripides's Andromache, 
1075; and Hamlet's 'sea of troubles' (ill. i. 59) by the kukQu Tr^Xayos 
of /Eschylus's Perscs, 443. Among all the creations of Shakespearean 
and Greek drama, Lady Macbeth and ^schylus's Clytemnestra, who 
'in man's counsels bore no woman's heart' (^yvvaiKo% dv8p6l3ovXov 
iXiTL^ov K^ap, Agamemnon, ii), most closely resemble each other. But 
a study of the points of resemblance attests no knowledge of /Eschylus 
on Shakespeare's part, but merely the close community of tragic genius 
that subsisted between the two poets. 



CHILDHOOD, EDUCATION, AND MARRIAGE 1 5 

Dr. Farmer enunciated in his 'Essay on Shake- 
speare's Learning ' ( i 'J^J^ the theory that Shakespeare 
knew no language but his own, and owed whatever 
knowledge he displayed of the classics and of Italian 
and French literature to English translations. But 
several of the books in French and Italian whence 
Shakespeare derived the plots of his dramas — Belle- 
forest's * Histoires Tragiques,' Ser Giovanni's ' II 
Pecorone,' and Cinthio's ' Hecatommithi,' for example 
— were not accessible to him in English translations ; 
and on more general grounds the theory of his igno- 
rance is adequately confuted. A boy with Shake- 
speare's exceptional alertness of intellect, during 
whose schooldays a training in Latin classics lay 
within reach, could hardly lack in future years all 
means of access to the literature of France and Italy. 

With the Latin and French languages, indeed, 
and with many Latin poets of the school curriculum, 
Shakespeare in his writings openly acknowledged his 
acquaintance. In 'Henry V the dialogue in many 
scenes is carried on in French, which is grammatically 
accurate if not idiomatic. In the mouth of his school- 
masters, Holof ernes in 'Love's Labour's Lost' and 
Sir Husfh Evans in ' Merry Wives of 

The poet's ° 1 1 t • 1 

classical Windsor,' Shakespeare placed Latm phrases 
equipmen. ^^^^^ directly from Lily's grammar, from 
the 'Sententiae Pueriles,* and from 'the good old 
Mantuan.' The influence of Ovid, especially the 
* Metamorphoses,' was apparent throughout his earli- 
est literary work, both poetic and dramatic, and is 
discernible in the 'Tempest,' his latest play (v. i. 33 



1 6 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

Beq.). In the Bodleian Library there is a copy of the 
Aldine edition of Ovid's ' Metamorphoses ' (i 502), and 
on the title is the signature 'W™. Sh^,' which ex- 
perts have declared — not quite conclusively — to be 
a genuine autograph of the poet.^ But, although 
Ovid's Latin text was certainly familiar to him, his 
closest adaptations of Ovid's ' Metamorphoses ' often 
reflect the phraseology of the popular English version 
by Arthur Golding, of which some seven editions 
were issued between 1565 and 1597. From Plautus 
Shakespeare drew the plot of the 'Comedy of Errors,' 
but it is just possible that Plautus's comedies, too, 
were accessible in English. Shakespeare had no title 
to rank as a classical scholar, and he did not disdain 
a liberal use of translations. His lack of exact 
scholarship fully accounts for the 'small Latin and , 
less Greek' with which he was credited by his 
scholarly friend, Ben Jonson. But Aubrey's report 
that ' he understood Latin pretty well ' need not be 
contested, and his knowledge of French may be 
estimated to have equalled his knowledge of Latin, 
while he doubtless possessed just sufficient acquaint- 
ance with Italian to enable him to discern the drift 
of an Italian poem or novel.^ 

1 Macray, Annals of the Bodleian Library, 1890, pp. 379 seq. 

2 Cf. Spencer Baynes, * What Shakespeare learnt at School,' in 
Shakespeare Stzidies, 1894, pp. 147 seq. Henry Ramsay, one of the 
panegyrists of Ben Jonson, in the collection of elegies entitled 
/ottsonus Virbius (1637), wrote of Jonson : 

That Latin he reduced, and could command 

That which your Shakespeare scarce could understand. 

Ramsay here merely echoes Jonson's familiar remarks on Shakespeare's 



CHILDHOOD, EDUCATION, AND MARRIAGE 1/ 

Of the few English books accessible to him in his 
schooldays, the chief was the EngHsh Bible, either 
in the popular Genevan version, first issued in a com- 
plete form in 1560, or in the Bishops' revision of 1568, 
which the Authorised Version of 161 1 closely followed. 
References to scriptural characters and incidents are 
not conspicuous in Shakespeare's plays, but, such as 
they are, they are drawn from all parts of 
speareand the Bible, and indicate that general ac- 
^ / ^" quaintance with the narrative of both Old 
and New Testaments which a clever boy would be 
certain to acquire either in the schoolroom or at 
church on Sundays. Shakespeare quotes or adapts 
biblical phrases with far greater frequency than he 
makes allusion to episodes in biblical history. But 
many such phrases enjoyed proverbial currency, and 
others, which were more recondite, were borrowed 
from Holinshed's * Chronicles ' and secular works 
whence he drew his plots. As a rule his use of scrip- 
tural phraseology, as of scriptural history, suggests 
youthful reminiscence and the assimilative tendency 
of the mind in a stage of early development rather 

•small Latin,' and is not, as has been erroneously suggested, offering 
independent testimony respecting Shakespeare's ignorance of the 
classics. A like mistaken significance has been assigned to Jasper 
Mayne's vague assurance in his elegy on Jonson (also in Jonsonus 
Virbius) that Jonson's native genius was such that he 

Without Latin helps had been as rare 

As Beaumont, Fletcher, or as Shakespeare were. 

The conjunction of Shakespeare with Beaumont and Fletcher, who 
were well versed in the classics, proves the futility of basing any 
argument as to Shakespeare's attainments on Mayne's hazy rhapsody. 
C 



1 8 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

than close and continuous study of the Bible in 
adult life.^ 

Shakespeare was a schoolboy in July 1575, when 
Queen Elizabeth made a progress through Warwick- 
shire on a visit to her favourite, the Earl of Leicester, 
at his castle of Kenilworth. References have been 
detected in Oberon's vision in Shakespeare's * Mid- 
summer Night's Dream ' (11. i. 148-68) to the fantastic 
pageants and masques with which the Queen during 
her stay was entertained in Kenilworth Park. Lei- 
cester's residence was only fifteen miles from Stratford, 
and it is possible that Shakespeare went thither with 
his father to witness some of the open-air festivities ; 
but two full descriptions which were published in 1 576, 
in pamphlet form, gave Shakespeare knowledge of 
all that took place. ^ Shakespeare's opportunities of 
recreation outside Stratford were in any case restricted 
during his schooldays. His father's financial difficul- 
ties grew steadily, and they caused his removal from 
school at an unusually early age. Probably in 1577, 
With- when he was thirteen, he was enlisted by his 
f^Q^^^ father in an effort to restore his decaying f or- 
schooi. tunes. ' I have been told heretofore,' wrote 
Aubrey, *by some of the neighbours that when he was a 
boy he exercised his father's trade,' which, according to 
the writer, was that of a butcher. It is possible that 
John's ill-luck at the period compelled him to confine 

1 Bishop Charles Wordsworth, in his Shakespeare' s Knowledge and 
Use of the Bible (4th ed. 1892), gives a long list of passages for which 
Shakespeare may have been indebted to the Bible. But the Bishop's 
deductions as to the strength of Shakespeare's piety are strained. 

^ See p. 166 infra. 



CHILDHOOD, EDUCATION, AND MARRIAGE 19 

himself to this occupation, which in happier days 
formed only one branch of his business. His son may 
have been formally apprenticed to him. An early Strat- 
ford tradition describes him as ' a butcher's apprentice.' ^ 
' When he kill'd a calf,' Aubrey proceeds less convin- 
cingly, ' he would doe it in a high style and make a 
speech. There was at that time another butcher's 
son in this towne, that was held not at all inferior to 
him for a naturall witt, his acquaintance, and coeta- 
nean, but dyed young.' 

At the end of 1582 Shakespeare, when little more 
than eighteen and a half years old, took a step which 
The poet's was little Calculated to lighten his father's 
marriage, anxictics. He married. His wife, accord- 
ing to the inscription on her tombstone, was^ his 
senior by eight years. Rowe states that she ' was 
the daughter of one Hathaway, said to have been 
a substantial yeoman in the neighbourhood of 
Stratford.' 

On September i, 1581, Richard Hathaway, 'hus- 
bandman ' of Shottery, a hamlet in the parish of Old 
Stratford, made his will, which was proved on July 9, 
1582, and is now preserved at Somerset House. 
His house and land, 'two and a half 

Richard 

Hathaway virgatcs,' had been long held in copyhold 
^^^' by his family, and he died in fairly pro- 
sperous circumstances. His wife Joan, the chief 
legatee, was directed to carry on the farm with the aid 
of her eldest son, Bartholomew, to whom a share in 

1 Notes of John Dowdall, a tourist in Warwickshire in 1693 
(published in 1838). 



20 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

its proceeds was assigned. Six other children — three 
sons and three daughters — received sums of money ; 
Agnes, the eldest daughter, and Catherine, the second 
daughter, were each allotted 61. 13^-. ^d., *to be paid 
at the day of her marriage,' a phrase common in wills 
Anne of the period. Anne and Agnes were in the 

Hat away, sixteenth century alternative spellings of the 
same Christian name ; and there is little doubt that 
the daughter * Agnes ' of Richard Hathaway's will 
became, within a few months of Richard Hathaway's 
death, Shakespeare's wife. 

The house at Shottery, now known as Anne 
Hathaway's cottage, and reached from Stratford by 
field-paths, undoubtedly once formed part of Richard 
Anne Hathaway's farmhouse, and, despite nume- 

way?' ^ous alterations and renovations, still pre- 
cottage. serves many features of a thatched farmhouse 
of the Elizabethan period. The house remained in 
the Hathaway family till 1838, although the male line 
became extinct in 1746. It was purchased in behalf 
of the public by the Birthplace trustees in 1892. 

No record of the solemnisation of Shakespeare's 
marriage survives. Although the parish of Stratford 
included Shottery, and thus both bride and bride- 
groom were parishioners, the Stratford parish register 
is silent on the subject. A local tradition, which 
seems to have come into being during the nineteenth 
century, assigns the ceremony to the neighbouring 
hamlet or chapelry of Luddington, of which neither 
the chapel nor parish registers now exist. But one 
important piece of documentary evidence directly 



CHILDHOOD, EDUCATION, AND MARRIAGE 21 

bearing on the poet's matrimonial venture is accessible. 
In the registry of the bishop of the diocese (Worcester) 
a deed is extant wherein Fulk Sandells and John 
Richardson, ' husbandmen of Stratford,' bound them- 
selves in the bishop's consistory court, on November 
28, 1582, in a surety of 40/., to free the bishop of all 
liability should a lawful impediment — * by reason of 
The bond any precontract ' \_z.e. with a third party] or 
fmpedi- consanguinity — be subsequently disclosed to 
ments. inipcril the validity of the marriage, then in 
contemplation, of William Shakespeare with Anne 
Hathaway. On the assumption that no such impedi- 
ment was known to exist, and provided that Anne 
obtained the consent of her * friends,' the marriage 
might proceed *with once asking of the bannes of 
matrimony betwene them.' 

Bonds of similar purport, although differing in 
significant details, are extant in all diocesan registries 
of the sixteenth century. They were obtainable on 
the payment of a fee to the bishop's commissary, and 
had the effect of expediting the marriage ceremony 
while protecting the clergy from the consequences of 
any possible breach of canonical law. But they were not 
common, and it was rare for persons in the compara- 
tively humble position in life of Anne Hathaway and 
young Shakespeare to adopt such cumbrous formalities 
when there was always available the simpler, less ex- 
pensive, and more leisurely method of marriage by 
'thrice asking of the banns.* Moreover, the wording 
of the bond which was drawn before Shakespeare's 
marriage differs in important respects from that 



22 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

adopted in all other known examples. ^ In the latter 
it is invariably provided that the marriage shall not 
take place without the consent^ of the parents or 
governors of both bride and bridegroom. In the case 
of the marriage of an 'infant' bridegroom the formal 
consent of his parents was absolutely essential to 
strictly regular procedure, although clergymen might 
be found who were ready to shut their eyes to the 
facts of the situation and to run the risk of solemnis- 
ing the marriage of an ' infant ' without inquiry as to 
the parents' consent. The clergyman who united 
Shakespeare in wedlock to Anne Hathaway was 
obviously of this easy temper. Despite the circum- 
stance that Shakespeare's bride was of full age and 
he himself was by nearly three years a minor, the 
Shakespeare bond stipulated merely for the consent 
of the bride's ' friends,' and ignored the bridegroom's 
parents altogether. Nor was this the only irregularity 
in the document. In other pre-matrimonial covenants 
of the kind the name either of the bridegroom him- 
self or of the bridegroom's father figures as one of the 
two sureties, and is mentioned first of the two. Had the 
usual form been followed, Shakespeare's father would 
have been the chief party to the transaction in behalf 
of his ' infant ' son. But in the Shakespeare bond the 
sole sureties, Sandells and Richardson, were farmers 
of Shottery, the bride's native place. Sandells was a 

1 These conclusions are drawn from an examination of like docu- 
ments in the Worcester diocesan registry. Many formal declarations 
of consent on the part of parents to their children's marriages are also 
extant there among the sixteenth-century archives. 



CHILDHOOD, EDUCATION, AND MARRIAGE 23 

' supervisor ' of the will of the bride's father, who there 
describes him as ' my trustie friende and neighbour.' 

The prominence of the Shottery husbandmen in 
the negotiations preceding Shakespeare's marriage 
suggests the true position of affairs. Sandells and 
Richardson, representing the lady's family, doubt- 
less secured the deed on their own initiative, so 
that Shakespeare might have small opportunity of 
evading a step which his intimacy with their friend's 
daughter had rendered essential to her reputation. 
The wedding probably took place, without the con- 
sent of the bridegroom's parents — it may be without 
their knowledge — -soon after the signing of the 
deed. Within six months — in May 1583 — a daugh- 
Birthofa tcr was bom to the poet, and was baptised 
daughter, -j^ ^j^^ name of Susanna at Stratford parish 
church on the 26th. 

Shakespeare's apologists have endeavoured to 
show that the public betrothal or formal ' troth-plight ' 
which was at the time a common prelude to a 
wedding carried with it all the privileges of marriage. 
But neither Shakespeare's detailed description of a 
betrothaP nor of the solemn verbal contract that 

1 Twelfth Night, act v. sc. i. 11. 1 60-4 : 

A contract of eternal bond of love, 

Confirm'd by mutual joinder of your hands, 

Attested by the holy close of lips, 

Strengthen'd by intercha-ngement of your rings ; 

And all the ceremony of this compact 

Seal'd in my [z'.^. the priest's] function by my testimony. 

In Measure for Measure Claudio's offence is intimacy with the Lady 
Julia after the contract of betrothal and before the formality of marriage 
(cf. act i. sc. ii. 1. 155, act iv. sc. i. 1. 73). 



24 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

ordinarily preceded marriage lends the contention 
much support. Moreover, the whole circumstances 
Formal ^^ ^^^ ^^^^ render it highly improbable 
betrothal that Shakcspcare and his bride submitted 

probably 

dispensed to the formal preliminaries of a betrothal. 
In that ceremony the parents of both 
contracting parties invariably played foremost parts, 
but the wording of the bond precludes the assumption 
that the bridegroom's parents were actors in any 
scene of the hurriedly planned drama of his marriage. 
A difficulty has been imported into the narration 
of the poet's matrimonial affairs by the assumption 
of his identity with one 'William Shakespeare,' to 
whom, according to an entry in the Bishop of Wor- 
cester's register, a license was issued on November 27, 
1582 (the day before the signing of the Hathaway 
bond), authorising his marriage with Anne Whateley 
of Temple Grafton. The theory that the maiden 
name of Shakespeare's wife was Whateley is quite 
untenable, and it is unsafe to assume that the bishop's 
clerk, when making a note of the grant of the license 
in his register, erred so extensively as to write 'Anne 
Whateley of Temple Grafton ' for * Anne Hathaway 
of Shottery.' The husband of Anne Whateley cannot 
reasonably be identified with the poet. He was doubt- 
less another of the numerous William Shakespeares 
who abounded in the diocese of Worcester. Had a 
license for the poet's marriage been secured on Novem- 
ber 2j} it is unUkely that the Shottery husbandmen 

1 No marriage registers of the period are extant at Temple Grafton 
to inform us whether Anne Whateley actually married her William 



CHILDHOOD, EDUCATION, AND MARRIAGE 25 

would have entered next day into a bond * against 
impediments,' the execution of which might well 
have been demanded as a preliminary to the grant of 
a license but was wholly supererogatory after the grant 
was made. 

Shakespeare or who precisely the parties were. A Whateley family 
resided in Stratford, but there is nothing to show that Anne of Temple 
Grafton was connected with it. The chief argument against the con- 
clusion that the marriage license and the marriage bond concerned 
different couples lies in the apparent improbability that two persons, 
both named William Shakespeare, should on two successive days not 
only be arranging with the Bishop of Worcester's official to marry, but 
should be involving themselves, whether on their own initiative or on 
that of their friends, in more elaborate and expensive forms of proce- 
dure than were habitual to the humbler ranks of contemporary society. 
But the Worcester diocese covered a very wide area, and was honey- 
combed with Shakespeare families of all degrees of gentility. The 
William Shakespeare whom Anne Whateley was licensed to marry may 
have been of a superior station, to which marriage by license was 
deemed appropriate. On the unwarranted assumption of the identity 
of the William Shakespeare of the marriage bond with the William 
Shakespeare of the marriage license, a romantic theory has been 
based to the effect that 'Anne Whateley of Temple Grafton,' believing 
herself to have a just claim to the poet's hand, secured the license on 
hearing of the proposed action of Anne Hathaway's friends, and hoped, 
by moving in the matter a day before the Shottery husbandmen, to 
insure Shakespeare's fidelity to his alleged pledges. 



26 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 



III 

THE FAREWELL TO STRATFORD 

Anne Hathaway's greater burden of years and the 
likelihood that the poet was forced into marrying her 
by her friends were not circumstances of happy augury. 
Although it is dangerous to read into Shakespeare's 
dramatic utterances allusions to his personal expe- 
rience, the emphasis with which he insists that a 
woman should take in marriage an 'elder than her- 
self,' ^ and that prenuptial intimacy is productive of 
'barren hate, sour-ey'd disdain, and discord,' suggest 
a personal interpretation.^ To both these unpromis- 
ing features was added, in the poet's case, the absence 
of a means of livelihood, and his course of life in the 
years that immediately followed implies that he bore 
his domestic ties with impatience. Early in 1585 

1 Tzvelfth Night, act ii. sc. iv. 1, 29 : 

Let still the woman take 
An elder than herself; so wears she to him, 
So sways she level in her husband's heart, 

2 Tempest, act iv. sc. i. 11. 15-22: 

If thou dost break her virgin knot before 
All sanctimonious ceremonies may 
With full and holy rite be minister'd, 
No sweet aspersion shall the heavens let fall 
To make this contract grow; but barren hate, 
Sour-ey'd disdain, and discord, shall bestrew 
The union of your bed with weeds so loathly 
That you shall hate it both. 



THE FAREWELL TO STRATFORD 2/ 

twins were born to him, a son (Hamnet) and a 
daughter (Judith) ; both were baptised on February 2, 
and were named after their father's friends, Hamnet 
Sadler, and Judith, Sadler's wife. All the evidence 
points to the conclusion, which the fact that he had 
no more children confirms, that in the later months 
of the year (1585) he left Stratford, and that, 
although he was never wholly estranged from his 
family, he saw little of wife or children for eleven 
years. Between the winter of 1585 and the autumn 
of 1596 — an interval which synchronises with his 
first literary triumphs — there is only one shadowy 
mention of his name in Stratford records. In 
April 1587 there died Edmund Lambert, who held 
Asbies under the mortgage of 1578, and a few 
months later Shakespeare's name, as owner of a 
contingent interest, was joined to that of his father 
and mother in a formal assent given to an abortive 
proposal to confer on Edmund's son and heir, John 
Lambert, an absolute title to the estate on condition 
of his cancelling the mortgage and paying 20/. But 
the deed does not indicate that Shakespeare per- 
sonally assisted at the transaction.^ 

Shakespeare's early literary work proves that 
while in the country he eagerly studied birds, flowers, 
and trees, and gained a detailed knowledge of horses 
and dogs. All his kinsfolk were farmers, and with 
them he doubtless as a youth practised many field 
sports. Sympathetic references to hawking, hunting, 
coursing, and angling abound in his early plays and 

1 Halliwell-Phillipps, ii. 11-13. 



28 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

poems.^ And his sporting experiences passed at times 
beyond orthodox Hmits. A poaching adventure, 
according to a credible tradition, was the immediate 
cause of his long severance from his native place. ' He 
had,' wrote Rowe in 1709, *by a misfortune common 
enough to young fellows, fallen into ill company, and, 
among them, some, that made a frequent practice of 
deer-stealing, engaged him with them more than 
^ , . once in robbinsc a park that belono^ed to Sir 

Poaching o i o 

at Charie- Thomas Lucy of Charlecote near Stratford. 
For this he was prosecuted by that gentle- 
man, as he thought, somewhat too severely ; and, in 
order to revenge that ill-usage, he made a ballad upon 
him, and though this, probably the first essay of his 
poetry, be lost, yet it is said to have been so very 
bitter that it redoubled the prosecution against him 
to that degree that he was obliged to leave his 
business and family in Warwickshire and shelter 
himself in London.' The independent testimony of 
Archdeacon Davies, who was vicar of Saperton, 
Gloucestershire, late in the seventeenth century, is to 
the effect that Shakespeare ' was much given to all 
unluckiness in stealing venison and rabbits, par- 
ticularly from Sir Thomas Lucy, who had him oft 
whipt, and sometimes imprisoned, and at last made 
him fly his native county to his great advancement.' 
The law of Shakespeare's day (5 Eliz. cap. 21) 

1 Cf. Ellacombe, Shakespeare as an Angler, 1883 ; J. E. Hartin,g^, 
Ornithology of Shakespeare, 1872. The best account of Shakespeare's 
knowledge of sport is given by the Right Hon. D. H. Madden in his 
entertaining and at the same time scholarly Diary of Master William 
Silence : a Study of Shakespeare and Elizabethan Sport, 1897. 



THE FAREWELL TO STRATFORD 29 

punished deer-stealers with three months' imprison- 
ment and the payment of thrice the amount of the 
damage done. 

The tradition has been challenged on the ground 

that the Charlecote deer-park was of later date than 

the sixteenth century. But Sir Thomas 

Unwar- •' 

ranted Lucy was an extensive game-preserver, 
of the and owned at Charlecote a warren in which 

a few harts or does doubtless found an 
occasional home. Samuel Ireland was informed 
in 1794 that Shakespeare stole the deer, not from 
Charlecote, but from Fulbroke Park, a few miles 
off, and Ireland supplied in his 'Views on the 
Warwickshire Avon,' 1795, an engraving of an old 
farmhouse in the hamlet of Fulbroke, where he 
asserted that Shakespeare was temporarily imprisoned 
after his arrest. An adjoining hovel was locally 
known for some years as Shakespeare's * deer-barn,' 
but no portion of Fulbroke Park, which included the 
site of these buildings (now removed), was Lucy's 
property in Elizabeth's reign, and the amended 
legend, which was solemnly confided to Sir Walter 
Scott in 1828 by the owner of Charlecote, seems pure 
invention. 1 

The ballad which Shakespeare is reported to have 
fastened on the park gates of Charlecote does not, as 
Rowe acknowledged, survive. No authenticity can 
be allowed the worthless lines beginning ' A parha- 
ment member, a justice of peace,' which were 

1 Cf. C. Holte Bracebridge, Shakespeare no Deer stealer, 1862 ; 
Lockhart, Life of Scott, vii. 123. 



30 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

represented to be Shakespeare's on the authority of 
an old man who lived near Stratford and died in 1703. 
But such an incident as the tradition reveals has left 
a distinct impress on Shakespearean drama. Justice 
Justice Shallow is beyond doubt a reminiscence of 
Shallow. .j-j^g owner of Charlecote. According to 
Archdeacon Davies of Saperton, Shakespeare's * re- 
venge was so great that' he caricatured Lucy as 
'Justice Clodpate,' who was (Davies adds) represented 
on the stage as 'a great man/ and as bearing, in 
allusion to Lucy's name, * three louses rampant for 
his arms.' Justice Shallow, Davies's 'Justice Clod- 
pate,' came to birth in the ' Second Part of Henry IV ' 
(1598), and he is represented in the opening scene of 
the * Merry Wives of Windsor ' as having come from 
Gloucestershire to Windsor to make a Star-Chamber 
matter of a poaching raid on his estate. The ' three 
luces hauriant argent ' were the arms borne by the 
Charlecote Lucys, and the dramatist's prolonged 
reference in this scene to the ' dozen white luces ' 
on Justice Shallow's ' old coat ' fully establishes 
Shallow's identity with Lucy. 

The poaching episode is best assigned to 1585, 
but it may be questioned whether Shakespeare, on 
fleeing from Lucy's persecution, at once 
from sought an asylum in London. William Bees- 

ton, a seventeenth-century actor, remem- 
bered hearing that he had been for a time a country 
schoolmaster ' in his younger years,' and it seems 
possible that on first leaving Stratford he found some 
such employment in a neighbouring village. The 



THE FAREWELL TO STRATFORD 31 

suggestion that he joined, at the end of 1585, a band of 
youths of the district in serving in the Low Countries 
under the Earl of Leicester, whose castle of Kenil- 
worth was within easy reach of Stratford, is based on 
an obvious confusion between him and others of his 
name.^ The knowledge of a soldier's life which 
Shakespeare exhibited in his plays is no greater and 
no less than that which he displayed of almost all 
other spheres of human activity, and to assume that 
he wrote of all or of any from practical experience, 
unless the evidence be conclusive, is to underrate his 
intuitive power of realising life under almost every 
aspect by force of his imagination. 

^ Cf. W. J. Thorns, Three Notelets on Shakespeare, 1865, pp. 16 seq. 



32 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 



IV 

ON THE LONDON STAGE 

To London Shakespeare naturally drifted, doubt- 
less trudging thither on foot during 1586, by way 
The iour- ^^ Oxford and High Wycombe.^ Tradition 
neyto Doints to that as Shakespeare's favoured 

London. 

route, rather than to the road by Banbury 
and Aylesbury. Aubrey asserts that at Grendon, 
near Oxford, ' he happened to take the humour of 
the constable in "Midsummer Night's Dream'" — by 
which he meant, we may suppose, ' Much Ado about 
Nothing ' — but there were watchmen of the Dog- 
berry type all over England, and probably at Strat- 
ford itself. The Crown Inn (formerly 3 Cornmarket 
Street) near Carfax, at Oxford, was long pointed out 
as one of his resting-places. 

To only one resident in London is Shakespeare 
likely to have been known previously.^ Richard 

^ Cf. Hales, Notes on Shakespeare, 1884, pp. I-24. 

2 The common assumption that Richard Burbage,the chief actor with 
whom Shakespeare was associated, was a native of Stratford is wholly- 
erroneous. Richard was born in Shoreditch, and his father came from 
Hertfordshire. John Heming, another of Shakespeare's actor-friends 
who has also been claimed as a native of Stratford, was beyond reason- 
able doubt born at Droitwich in Worcestershire. Thomas Greene, a 



ON THE LONDON STAGE 33 

Field, a native of Stratford, and son of a friend of 
Shakespeare's father, had left Stratford in 1579 
Ri h -d ^^ serve an apprenticeship with Thomas 
Field, his Vautrollier, the London printer. Field was 

townsman. . 

made tree or the Stationers Company m 
1587, and resided for more than a quarter of a century 
afterwards at his printing-office in Blackfriars near 
Ludgate. He and Shakespeare were soon associated 
as author and publisher ; but the theory that Field 
found work in VautroUier's printing-office for Shake- 
speare on his arrival in London is fanciful. ^ No more 
can be said for the attempt to prove that he obtained 
employment as a lawyer's clerk. In view of his general 
quickness of apprehension, Shakespeare's accurate use 
of legal terms, which deserves all the attention that 
has been paid it, may be attributable in part to his 
observation of the many legal processes in which his 
father was involved, and in part to early intercourse 
with members of the Inns of Court.^ 

Tradition and common-sense alike point to one 

Theatrical ^^ ^^^ ^^^^ ^^^ theatres (The Theatre or 
employ- The Curtaiu) that existed in London at the 

ment. , ^ 

date of his arrival as an early scene of his 
regular occupation. The compiler of ' Lives of the 

popular comic actor at the Red Bull Theatre early in the seventeenth 
century, is conjectured to have belonged to Stratford on no grounds 
that deserve attention; Shakespeare was in no way associated with 
him. 

^ Blades, Shakspere and Typog7'aphy, 1872. 

^ Cf. Lord Campbell, Shakespeare' s Legal Acquirements, 1859, 
Legal terminology abounded in all plays and poems of the period, e.g. 
Barnabe Barnes's Sonnets, 1593, and Zepheria, 1 594 (see Appendix ix). 
D 



34 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

Poets ' (1753)^ was the first to relate the story that 
his original connection with the playhouse was as 
holder of the horses of visitors outside the doors. 
According to the same compiler, the story was related 
by D'Avenant to Betterton; but Rowe, to whom 
Betterton communicated it, made no use of it. The 
two regular theatres of the time were both reached on 
horseback by men of fashion, and the owner of The 
Theatre, James Burbage, kept a livery stable at 
Smithfield. There is no inherent improbability in the 
tale. Dr. Johnson's amplified version, in which Shake- 
speare was represented as organising a service of boys 
for the purpose of tending visitors' horses, sounds 
apocryphal. 

There is every indication that Shakespeare was 
speedily offered employment inside the playhouse. 
In 1587 the two chief companies of actors, claiming 
respectively the nominal patronage of the Queen and 
Lord Leicester, returned to London from a provincial 
tour, during which they visited Stratford. Two subor- 
dinate companies, one of which claimed the patronage 
of the Earl of Essex and the other that of Lord 
Stafford, also performed in the town during the same 
year. Shakespeare's friends may have called the 
attention of the strolling players to the homeless youth, 
rumours of whose search for employment about the 
London theatres had doubtless reached Stratford. 
From such incidents seems to have sprung the 
opportunity which offered Shakespeare fame and 

1 Commonly assigned to Theophilus Gibber, but written by Robert 
Shiels and other hack-writers under Gibber's editorship. 



ON THE LONDON STAGE 35 

fortune. According to Rowe's vague statement, ' he 

was received into the company then in being at first 

in a very mean rank.' William Castle, the 

A play- ■' 

house parish clerk of Stratford at the end of the 

S6rvitor. 

seventeenth century, was in the habit of 
telling visitors that he entered the playhouse as a 
servitor. Malone recorded in 1780 a stage tradition 
* that his first ofifice in the theatre was that of 
prompter's attendant ' or call-boy. His intellectual 
capacity and the amiability with which he turned to 
account his versatile powers were probably soon recog- 
nised, and thenceforth his promotion was assured. 

Shakespeare's earliest reputation was made as an 
actor, and, although his work as a dramatist soon 
The actino- cclipsed his histrionic fame, he remained a 
companies, prominent member of the actor's profession 
till near the end of his life. By an Act of Parlia- 
ment of 1 571 (14 Eliz. cap. 2), which was re-enacted 
in 1596 (39 Eliz. cap. 4), players were under the 
necessity of procuring a license to pursue their 
calling from a peer of the realm or * personage of 
higher degree'; otherwise they were adjudged to be 
of the status of rogues and vagabonds. The Queen 
herself and many Elizabethan peers were liberal in 
the exercise of their licensing powers, and few actors 
failed to secure a statutory license, which gave them a 
rank of respectability, and relieved them of all risk 
of identification with vagrants or 'sturdy beggars.' 
From an early period in Elizabeth's reign licensed 
actors were organised into permanent companies. In 
1587 and following years, besides three companies 



36 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

of duly licensed boy-actors that were formed from 
the choristers of St. Paul's Cathedral and the Chapel 
Royal and from Westminster scholars, there were 
in London at least six companies of fully licensed 
adult actors ; five of these were called after the noble- 
men to whom their members respectively owed their 
licenses (viz. the Earls of Leicester, Oxford, Sussex, 
and Worcester, and the Lord Admiral, Charles, Lord 
Howard of Effingham), and one of them whose actors 
derived their Hcense from the Queen was called the 
Queen's Company. 

The patron's functions in relation to the companies 
seem to have been mainly confined to the grant 
or renewal of the actors' licenses. Constant altera- 
tions of name, owing to the death or change from 
other causes of the patrons, render it difficult to 
trace with certainty each company's history. But 
there seems no doubt that the most influential of 
the companies named — that under the nominal 
patronage of the Earl of Leicester — passed on his 
death in September 1588 to the patronage of 
Ferdinando Stanley, Lord Strange, who became Earl 
of Derby on September 25, 1592. When the Earl of 
Derby died on April 16, 1594, his place as patron and 
licenser was successively filled by Henry Carey, first 
The Lord Lord Hunsdon, Lord Chamberlain(<^. July 23, 
w?^^^" 1596)' ^^^ by bis son and heir, George 
company. Carey, second Lord H unsdon, who him self be- 
came Lord Chamberlain in March 1597. After King 
James's succession in May 1603 the company was pro- 
moted to be the King's players, and, thus advanced 



ON THE LONDON STAGE 37 

in dignity, it fully maintained the supremacy which, 
under its successive titles, it had already long enjoyed. 

It is fair to infer that this was the company 
that Shakespeare originally joined and adhered to 
through life. Documentary evidence proves that he 
was a member of it in December 1594; in May 
A member 1603 he was onc of its leaders. Four 
lchambe°- of i^s chief members — Richard Burbage, 
lam's. ^YiQ greatest tragic actor of the day, John 

Heming, Henry Condell, and Augustine Phillips 
— were among Shakespeare's lifelong friends. Under 
this company's auspices, moreover, Shakespeare's 
plays first saw the light. Only two of the plays 
claimed for him — * Titus Andronicus' and * 3 Henry 
VI ' — seem to have been performed by other com- 
panies (both by the Earl of Pembroke's men, and 
' Titus ' by the Earl of Sussex's men as well). 

When Shakespeare became a member of the com- 
pany, it was doubtless performing at The Theatre, the 
playhouse in Shoreditch which James Burbage, the 
father of the great actor, Richard Burbage, had con- 
structed in 1 576 ; it abutted on the Finsbury Fields, and 
stood outside the City's boundaries. The only other 
London playhouse then in existence — The Curtain 
in Moorfields — was near at hand ; its name survives 
in Curtain Road, Shoreditch. But at an early date 
in his acting career Shakespeare's company 
London sought and found new quarters. While 
known as Lord Strange's men, they opened 
on February 19, 1592, a third London theatre, called 
the Rose, which Philip Henslowe, the speculative 



38 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

theatrical manager, had erected on the Bankside, 
Southwark. At the date of the inauguration of the 
Rose Theatre Shakespeare's company was temporarily 
allied with another company, the Admiral's men, who 
numbered the great actor Edward Alleyn among them. 
Alleyn for a few months undertook the direction of 
the amalgamated companies, but they quickly parted, 
and no further opportunity was offered Shakespeare of 
enjoying professional relations with Alleyn. The Rose 
Theatre was doubtless the earliest scene of Shake- 
speare's pronounced successes alike as actor and 
dramatist. Subsequently for a short time in 1594 he 
frequented the stage of another new theatre at Newing. 
ton Butts, and between 1595 and 1599 the older 
stages of The Curtain and of The Theatre in Shore- 
ditch. The Curtain remained open till the Civil 
Wars, although its vogue after 1600 was eclipsed 
by that of younger rivals. In 1599 Richard Burbage 
and his brother Cuthbert demolished the old build- 
ing of The Theatre and built, mainly out of the 
materials of the dismantled fabric, the famous theatre 
called the Globe on the Bankside. It was octagonal 
in shape, and built of wood, and doubtless Shake- 
speare described it (rather than The Curtain) as * this 
wooden O ' in the opening chorus of ' Henry V ' 
(1. 13). After 1599 the Globe was mainly occupied 
by Shakespeare's company, and in its profits he 
acquired an important share. From the date of its 
inauguration until the poet's retirement, the Globe — 
which quickly won the first place among London 
theatres — seems to have been the sole playhouse with 



ON THE LONDON STAGE 39 

which Shakespeare was professionally associated. The 
equally familiar Blackf riars Theatre, which was created 
out of a dwelling-house by James Burbage, the actor's 
father, at the end of 1596, was for many years after- 
wards leased out to the company of boy-actors known 
as *the Queen's Children of the Chapel' ; it was not 
occupied by Shakespeare's company until December 
1609 or January 16 10, when his acting days were 
nearing their end.^ 

In London Shakespeare resided near the theatres. 
According to a memorandum by Alleyn (which 
Malone quoted), he lodged in 1596 near 
residence ' the Bear Garden in Southwark.' Previously 
he resided in St. Helen's Parish, Bishops- 
gate, and he was held liable there for a subsidy 
which was assessed in 1595. Shakespeare's property 
in St. Helen's was rated at 5/. ; 5^-. was demanded of 
him on that account in 1597 ^^^ I3^- 4<^- ^^ 1598.^ 

The chief differences between theatrical represen- 
tation in Shakespeare's day and our own lay in the 
absence of scenery and women-actors from the Eliza- 
bethan stage. All female rS/es were, until the Restora- 
tion in 1660, assumed in public theatres by men or 
boys.^ Fashionable costume of the day was worn, 
without any endeavour to adapt it to the represented 
period or place. Consequently the skill needed to 
rouse in the audience the requisite illusions was far 

1 The site of the Blackfriars Theatre is now occupied by the offices 
of the Times newspaper in Queen Victoria Street, E.G. 

2 Cf. Excheq2ier Lay Subsidies, City of London, 146/369, Public 
Record Office; Prof. J. W. Hales in Athenczum, March 26, 1904. 

^ Shakespeare alludes to the appearance of men or boys in women's 
parts when he makes Rosalind say laughingly to the men of the audience 



40 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

greater then than at later periods. But the profes- 
sional customs of Elizabethan actors approximated 
in other respects more closely to those of their modern 
successors than is usually recognised. The practice 
of touring in the provinces was followed with even 
greater regularity then than now. Few companies 

in the epilogue to As You Like //, ^ If I were a woman, I would kiss 

as many,' &c. Similarly, Cleopatra on her downfall '\xv Antony and 

Cleopatra, v. ii. 220 seq., laments : 

the quick comedians 
Extemporally will stage us . . . and I shall see 
Some squeaking Cleopatra boy my greatness. 

Men taking women's parts seem to have worn masks. Flute is bidden 
by Quince play Thisbe ' in a mask ' in Midsummer Nighfs Drea7n 
(i. ii. 53). In French and Italian theatres of the time women seem to 
have acted publicly, but until the Restoration public opinion in England 
deemed the appearance of a woman on a public stage to be an act of 
shamelessness on which the most disreputable of her sex would hardly 
venture. With a curious inconsistency ladies of rank were encouraged 
at Queen Elizabeth's Court, and still more frequently at the Courts of 
James I and Charles I, to take part in private and amateur representations 
of masques and short dramatic pageants. During the reign of James I 
scenic decoration, usually designed by Inigo Jones, accompanied the 
production of masques in the royal palaces, but until the Restoration 
the public stages were bare of any scenic contrivance except a front 
curtain opening in the middle and a balcony or upper platform resting 
on pillars at the back of the stage, from which portions of the dialogue 
were sometimes spoken, although occasionally the balcony seems to 
have been occupied by spectators (cf. a sketch made by a Dutch visitor 
to London in 1596 of the stage of the Swan Theatre, then newly erected 
on Bankside, Southwark, in Zur Kenntniss der altenglischen Buhne von 
Karl Theodor Gaedertz. Mitder ersten azithentischen injiern Ansicht der 
Schwans Theater in London, Bremen, 1888). Sir Philip Sidney humor- 
ously described the spectator's difficulties in an Elizabethan playhouse, 
where, owing to the absence of stage scenery, he had to imagine the bare 
boards to present in rapid succession a garden, a rocky coast, a cave, and 
a battlefield {^Apologie for Poetrie, p. 52). Three flourishes on a trumpet 
announced the beginning of the performance, but a band of fiddlers 
played music between the acts. The scenes of each act were played 
without interruption. 



ON THE LONDON STAGE 4 1 

remained in London during the summer or early 
autumn, and every country town with two thousand 
or more inhabitants could reckon on at least one visit 
from travelling actors between May and October. A 
rapid examination of the extant archives of some 
seventy municipalities selected at random shows that 
Shakespeare's company between 1594 and 16 14 fre- 
quently performed in such towns as Barnstaple, Bath, 
Bristol, Coventry, Dover, Faversham, Folkestone, 
Hythe, Leicester, Maidstone, Marlborough, New 
Romney, Oxford, Rye in Sussex, Saffron Walden, 
Shake- and Shrewsbury.^ Shakespeare may be 
aueged' Credited with faithfully fulfilling all his pro- 
travels. f essional functions, and some of the references 
to travel in his sonnets were doubtless reminiscences 
of early acting tours. It has been repeatedly urged, 
moreover, that Shakespeare's company visited Scot- 
land, and that he went with it.^ In November 1599 

^ Cf. Halliwell-Phillipps's Visits of Shakespeare'' s Company of Actors 
to the Provincial Cities and Towns of England (privately printed, 1887). 
From the information there given, supplemented from several other 
sources, the following imperfect itinerary is deduced : 

1592. Coventry. 1606. Leicester, Saffron Walden, Marl- 

1593. Bristol, Bath, and Shrewsbury. borough, Oxford, Dover, and Maid- 

1594. Marlborough, Coventry, and Lei- stone, 
cester. 1607. Oxford. 

1597. Faversham, Bath, Rye, Bristol, 1608. Coventry and Marlborough. 

Dover, and Marlborough. 1609. Hythe, New Romney, Shrews- 

1602. Ipswich. bury, and Ipswich. 

1603. Richmond (Surrey), Bath, Coven- 1610. Dover, Oxford, and Shrewsbury, 
try, Shrewsbury, Mortlake, Wilton 1612. New Romney. 

House. * 1613. Folkestone, Oxford, and Shrews- 

1604. Oxford and Bath. bury. 

1605. Barnstaple and Oxford. 1614. Coventry. 

2 Cf. Knight's Life of Shakespeare (1843), p. 41 ; Fleay, Stage, 
pp. 135-6. 



42 'WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

English actors arrived in Scotland under the leader- 
ship of Lawrence Fletcher and one Martin, and were 
In Scot- welcomed with enthusiasm by the King.^ 
land. Fletcher was a colleague of Shakespeare 

in 1603, but is not known to have been one 
earlier. Shakespeare's company never included an 
actor named Martin. Fletcher repeated the visit in 
October 1601.^ There is nothing to indicate that any 
of his companions belonged to Shakespeare's company. 
In like manner, Shakespeare's accurate reference in 
'Macbeth' to the 'nimble' but 'sweet' climate of 
Inverness,^ and the vivid impression he conveys of 

' The favour bestowed by James VI on these English actors was 
so marked as to excite the resentment of the leaders of the Kirk. The 
English agent, George Nicolson, in a (hitherto unpublished) despatch 
dated from Edinburgh on November 12, 1599, wrote: 'The four Ses- 
sions of this Town (without touch by name of our English players, 
Fletcher and Mertyn [i.e. Martyn], with their company), and not 
knowing the King's ordinances for them to play and be heard, enacted 
[that] their flocks [were] to forbear and not to come to or haunt profane 
games, sports, or plays.' Thereupon the King summoned the Sessions 
before him in Council and threatened them with the full rigour of the 
law. Obdurate at first, the ministers subsequently agreed to moderate 
their hostile references to the actors. Finally, Nicolson adds, 'the 
King this day by proclamation with sound of trumpet hath commanded 
the players liberty to play, and forbidden their hinder or impeach- 
ment therein.' AfS. State Papers, Dora. Scotland, P.R.O. vol. Ixv. 
No. 64. 

2 Fleay, Stage, pp. 126-44. 

^ Cf. Duncan's speech (on arriving at Macbeth's castle of Inverness) : 

This castle hath a pleasant seat; the air 
Nimbly and sweetly recommends itself 
Unto our gentle senses. 

Ba7iqiio. This guest of summer, 

The temple-haunting martlet, does approve, 
By his lov'd mansionry, that the heaven's breath 
Smells wooingly here. {^Macbeth, i. vi. 1-6.) 



ON THE LONDON STAGE 43 

the aspects of wild Highland heaths, have been judged 
to be the certain fruits of a personal experience ; but 
the passages in question, into which a more definite 
significance has possibly been read than Shakespeare 
intended, can be satisfactorily accounted for by his 
inevitable intercourse with Scotsmen in London and 
the theatres after James I's accession. 

A few English actors in Shakespeare's day occa- 
sionally combined to make professional tours through 
foreign lands, where Court society invariably gave 
them a hospitable reception. In Denmark, Ger- 
many, Austria, Holland, and France, many dramatic 
performances were given before royal audiences by 
English actors between 1580 and 1630.1 That Shake- 
speare joined any of these expeditions is highly im- 
probable. Actors of small account at home mainly 
took part in them, and Shakespeare's name appears in 
no extant list of those who paid professional visits 
abroad. It is, in fact, unlikely that Shakespeare ever 
set foot on the continent of Europe in either a private 
or professional capacity. He repeatedly ridicules 
the craze for forei2:n travel.^ To Italy, it 

I" Italy. . ^ . °, . . ^ ^^ /' 

IS true, and especially to cities 01 Northern 
Italy, like Venice, Padua, Verona, Mantua, and 
Milan, he makes frequent and familiar reference, and 

1 Cf. Cohn, Shakespeare in Germany, 1865; Meissner, Die engli- 
schen Comodianten zur Zeit Shakespeare'' s in O ester reich, Vienna, 1884; 
Jon Stefansson on ' Shakespeare at Elsinore ' in Contemporary Review, 
January 1896; Notes and Queries, 5th ser. ix. 43, and xi. 520; and 
M. Jusserand's article in the Nineteenth Century, April 1898, on 
English actors in France. 

2 Cf. As You Like It, iv. i, 22-40. 



44 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

he supplied many a realistic portrayal of Italian life 
and sentiment. But the fact that he represents 
Valentine in the *Two Gentlemen of Verona' (i. i. 
71) as travelling from Verona to Milan by sea, 
and Prospero in 'The Tempest' as embarking on a 
ship at the gates of Milan (i. ii. 129-44), renders it 
almost impossible that he could have gathered his 
knowledge of Northern Italy from personal obser- 
vation.^ He doubtless owed all to the verbal reports 
of travelled friends or to books, the contents of 
which he had a rare power of assimilating and 
vitalising. 

The publisher Chettle wrote in 1592 that Shake- 
speare was ' exelent in the qualitie ^ he professes,' 
and the old actor William Beeston asserted in the 
next century that Shakespeare ' did act exceedingly 
well.' 3 But the r^/^.yin which he distins^uished 

Shake- . ^ 

speare's himself are imperfectly recorded. Few sur- 
viving documents refer directly to perfor- 
mances by him. At Christmas 1594 he joined the 
popular actors William Kemp, the chief comedian of 
the day, and Richard Burbage, the greatest tragic 
actor, in ' two several comedies or interludes ' which 
were acted on St. Stephen's Day and on Innocents' 
Day (December 26 and 28) at Greenwich Palace 
before the Queen. The players received 'xiiUt. y]s. 
viiid. and by waye of her Majesties rewarde vi/z. 

1 Cf. Elze, Essays, 1874, pp. 254 seq. 

2 ' Quality ' in Elizabethan English was the technical term for the 
actor's profession. 

^ Aubrey's Lives, ed. Andrew Clark, ii. 226. 



ON THE LONDON STAGE 45 

xiiis. iiijV., in all xxli.''^ Neither plays nor parts are 
named. Shakespeare's name stands first on the list 
of those who took part in the original performances 
of Ben Jonson's ' Every Man in his Humour* (1598), 
In the original edition of Jonson's 'Sejanus' (1605) 
the actors' names are arranged in two columns, and 
Shakespeare's name heads the second column, stand- 
ing parallel with Burbage's, which heads the first. 
But here again the character allotted to each actor is 
not stated. Rowe identified only one of Shakespeare's 
parts, 'the Ghost in his own "Hamlet,"' and Rowe 
asserted his assumption of that character to be * the 
top of his performance.' John Davies of Hereford 
noted that he ' played some kingly parts in sport.' ^ 
One of Shakespeare's younger brothers, presumably 
Gilbert, often came, wrote Oldys, to London in his 
younger days to see his brother act in his own plays ; 
and in his old age, when his memory was failing, 
he recalled his brother's performance of Adam in 
' As You Like It' In the 1623 folio edition of Shake- 
speare's ' Works ' his name heads the prefatory Ust 
*of the principall actors in all these playes.' 

That Shakespeare chafed under some of the 
conditions of the actor's calling is' commonly inferred 
Alleged from the * Sonnets.' There he reproaches 
anTctor's himsclf with becoming ' a motley to the view ' 
calling. ^(^x. 2), and chides fortune for having pro- 
vided for his liveUhood nothing better than 'public 

1 Halliwell-Phillipps, i. 121 ; Mrs. Stopes in Jahrbuch der deutschen 
Shakespeare-Gesellschaft, 1896, xxxii. 182 seq. 

2 Scourge of Folly, 1610, epigr. 159. 



46 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

means that public manners breed,' whence his name 
received a brand (cxi. 4-5). If such self-pity is to 
be literally interpreted, it only reflected an evanescent 
mood. His interest in all that touched the efficiency of 
his profession was permanently active. He was a keen 
critic of actors' elocution, and in 'Hamlet' shrewdly 
denounced their common failings, but clearly and 
hopefully pointed out the road to improvement. His 
highest ambitions lay, it is true, elsewhere than in 
acting, and at an early period of his theatrical career 
he undertook, with triumphant success, the labours of 
a playwright. But he pursued the profession of an 
actor loyally and uninterruptedly until he resigned 
all connection with the theatre within a few years of 
his death. 



EARLY DRAMATIC EFFORTS 47 



V 

EARLY DRAMATIC EFFORTS 

The whole of Shakespeare's dramatic work was pro- 
bably begun and ended within two decades (1591- 
Dramatic i^i i), between his twenty-seventh and forty- 
"^°^'^- seventh year. If the works traditionally 

assigned to him include some contributions from 
other pens, he was perhaps responsible, on the other 
hand, for portions of a few plays that are traditionally 
claimed for others. When the account is balanced, 
Shakespeare must be credited with the production, 
during these twenty years, of a yearly average of 
two plays, nearly all of which belong to the supreme 
rank of literature. Three volumes of poems must be 
added to the total. Ben Jonson was often told by the 
players that ' whatsoever he penned he never blotted 
out [i.e. erased] a line.' The editors of the First Folio 
attested that ' what *he thought he uttered with that 
easinesse that we have scarce received from him a 
blot in his papers.' Signs of hasty workmanship are 
not lacking, but they are few when it is considered 
how rapidly his numerous corhpositions came from 
his pen, and they are in the aggregate unimportant. 

By borrowing his plots he to some extent econo- 
mised his energy, but he transformed most of them, 



48 WILLIAM SHAKESi'EARE 

and it was not probably with the object of conserv- 
ing his strength that he systematically levied loans 
„. , on popular current literature like Holinshed's 

His bor- '^ '■ 

rowed * Chroniclcs,' North's translation of ' Plu- 

tarch,' widely read romances, and successful 
plays. In this regard he betrayed something of the 
practical temperament which is traceable in the 
conduct of the affairs of his later life. It was doubt- 
less with the calculated aim of ministering to the 
public taste that he unceasingly adapted, as his 
genius dictated, themes which had already, in the 
hands of inferior writers or dramatists, proved capable 
of arresting public attention. 

The professional playwrights sold their plays out- 
right to one or other of the acting companies, and they 
^, retained no learal interest in them after the 

The ^ 

revision manuscript had passed into the hands of the 
theatrical manager.^ It was not unusual for 
the manager to invite extensive revision of a play at 
the hands of others than its author before it was pro- 
duced on the stage, and again whenever it was revived. 
Shakespeare gained his earliest experience as a dra- 
matist by revising or rewriting behind the scenes plays 
that had become the property of his manager. It is 
possible that some of his labours in this direction 

1 One of the many crimes laid to the charge of the dramatist Robert 
Greene was that of fraudulently disposing of the same play to two 
companies, ' Ask the Queen's players,' his accuser bade him in 
Cuthbert Cony-Catcher's Defence of Cony- Catching, 1592, 'if you 
sold them not Orlando Ftirioso for twenty nobles \ji.e. about 7/.], 
and when they were in the country sold the same play to the Lord 
Admiral's men for as many more.' 



EARLY DRAMATIC EFFORTS 49 

remain unidentified. In a few cases his alterations 
were slight, but as a rule his fund of originality was 
too abundant to restrict him, when working as an 
adapter, to mere recension, and the results of most 
of his labours in that capacity are entitled to rank 
among origj^nal compositions. 

The determination of the exact order in which 

Shakespeare's plays were written depends largely on 

conjecture. External evidence is accessible 

Chrono- ^ 

logy of the in Only a few cases, and, although always 
worthy of the utmost consideration, is not 
invariably conclusive. The date of publication rarely 
indicates the date of composition. Only sixteen of 
the thirty-seven plays commonly assigned to Shake- 
speare were published in his lifetime, and it is question- 
able whether any were" published under his super- 
vision. ^ But subject-matter and metre both afford 
rough clues to the period in his career to which each 

1 The playhouse authorities deprecated the publishing of plays in 
the belief that their dissemination in print was injurious to the receipts 
of the theatre. A very small proportion of plays acted in the reigns 
of Elizabeth and James I consequently reached the printing press, and 
most of them are now lost. But, in the absence of any law of copy- 
right, publishers often defied the wishes of the owner of manuscripts. 
Many copies of a popular play were made for the actors, and if one 
of these copies chanced to fall into a publisher's hands, it was 
habitually issued without any endeavour to obtain either author's or 
manager's sanction. In March 1599 the theatrical manager Philip 
Henslowe endeavoured to induce a publisher who had secured a play- 
house copy of the comedy of Patient Grissell by Dekker, Chettle, and 
Haughton to abandon the publication of it by offering him a bribe of 2/. 
The publication was suspended till 1603 (cf. Henslowe's Dia^y, p. 167). 
As late as 1633 Thomas Heywood wrote of 'some actors who think it 
against their peculiar profit to have them [i.e. plays] come into print.' 
(^English Traveller^ pref.) 
£ 



50 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

play may be referred. In his early plays the spirit 
of comedy or tragedy appears in its simplicity; 
as his powers gradually matured he depicted life 
in its most complex involutions, and portrayed with 
masterly insight the subtle gradations of human 
sentiment and the mysterious workings of human 
passion. Comedy and tragedy are gradually blended ; 
and his work finally developed a pathos such as 
could only come of ripe experience. Similarly the 
metre undergoes emancipation from the hampering 
restraints of fixed rule and becomes flexible enough 
to respond to every phase of human feeling. In 
Metrical ^^^ blank vcrsc of the early plays a pause 
tests. jg strictly observed at the close of each 

line, and rhyming couplets are frequent. Gradually 
the poet overrides such artificial restrictions ; rhyme 
largely disappears ; recourse is more frequently made 
to prose ; the pause is varied indefinitely ; extra syl- 
lables are, contrary to strict metrical law, introduced 
at the end of lines, and at times in the middle ; the last 
word of the line is often a weak and unemphatic con- 
junction or preposition.^ To the latest plays fantastic 
and punning conceits which abound in early work are 
rarely accorded admission. But, while Shakespeare's^ 

^ W. S. Walker in his Shakespeare^ s Ve7'sijication, 1854, and Charles 
Bathurst in his Difference in Shakespeare'' s Versification at Different 
Periods of his Life, 1857, were the first to point out the general facts. 
Dr. Ingram's paper on ' The Weak Endings ' in A^ew Shakspere 
Society'' s Transactions (1874), vol. i, is of great value. Mr. Fleay's 
metrical tables, which first appeared in the same society's Transactions 
(1874), and have been reissued by Dr. Furnivall in a somewhat revised 
form in his introduction to Gervinus's Commentaries and in his Leopold 
Shakspere, give all the information possible. 



EARLY DRAMATIC EFFORTS 5 I 

achievement from the beginning to the end of his 
career offers clearer evidence than that of any other 
writer of genius of the steady and orderly growth 
of his poetic faculty, some allowance must be made 
for ebb and flow in the current of his artistic progress. 
Early work occasionally anticipates features that be- 
come habitual to late work, and late work at times em- 
bodies traits that are mainly identified with early work. 
No exclusive reliance in determining the precise 
chronology can be placed on the merely mechanical 
tests afforded by tables of metrical statistics. The 
chronological order can only be deduced with any 
confidence from a consideration of all the internal 
characteristics as well as the known external history 
of each play. The premisses are often vague and con- 
flicting, and no chronology hitherto suggested receives 
at all points universal assent. 

There is no external evidence to prove that any piece 
in which Shakespeare had a hand was produced before 
the spring of 1592. No play by him was published 
before 1597, and none bore his name on the title-page 
till 1 598. But his first essays have been with confidence 
allotted to 1591. To 'Love's Labour's Lost' may 
reasonably be assigned priority in point of 
Labour's time of all Shakespeare's dramatic produc- 
tions. Internal evidence alone indicates the 
date of composition, and-- proves that it was an early 
effort; but the subject-matter suggests that its author 
had already enjoyed extended opportunities of survey- 
ing London life and manners, such as were hardly open 
to him in the very first years of his settlement in the 



52 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

metropolis. ' Love's Labour's Lost ' embodies keen 
observation of contemporary life in many ranks of 
society, both in town and country, while the speeches 
of the hero Biron clothe much sound philosophy in 
masterly rhetoric. Its slender plot stands almost alone 
among Shakespeare's plots in that it is not known to 
have been borrowed, and stands quite alone in openly 
travestying known traits and incidents of current 
social and political life. The names of the chief 
characters are drawn from the leaders in the civil war 
in France, which was in progress between 1589 and 
1594, and was anxiously watched by the English 
public.^ Contemporary projects of academies for dis- 

1 The hero is the King of Navarre, in whose dominions the scene 
is laid. The two chief lords in attendance on him in the play, Biron 
and Longaville, bear the actual names of the two most strenuous sup- 
porters of the real King of Navarre (Biron's later career subsequently 
formed the subject of two plays by Chapman, TAe Conspiracie of Duke 
Biron and The Tragedy of Biron, which were both produced in 1605). 
The name of the Lord Dumain in Love''s Labour^s Lost is a common 
anglicised version of that Due de Maine or Mayenne whose name was so 
frequently mentioned in popular accounts of French affairs in connection 
with Navarre's movements that Shakespeare was led to number him also 
among his supporters. Mothe or La Mothe, the name of the pretty, 
ingenious page, was that of a French ambassador who was long popular 
in London; and, though he left England in 1583, he lived in the mem- 
ory of playgoers and playwrights long after Lovers Labour^s Lost was 
written. In Chapman's An Humourous Day's Mirth, 1599, M. Le 
Mot, a sprightly courtier in attendance on the King of France, is drawn 
from the same original, and his name, as in Shakespeare's play, suggests 
much punning on the word 'mote.' As late as 1602 Middleton, in his 
Blurt, Master Constable, act ii. scene ii. line 215, wrote: 

Ho God ! Ho God ! thus did I revel it 
When Monsieur Motte lay here ambassador. 

Armado, *the fantastical Spaniard' who haunts Navarre's Court, and 
is dubbed by another courtier ' a phantasm, a Monarcho,' is a caricature 



EARLY DRAMATIC EFFORTS 53 

ciplining young men ; fashions of speech and dress 
current in fashionable circles ; recent attempts on the 
part of Elizabeth's government to negotiate with the 
Tsar of Russia ; the inefficiency of rural constables and 
the pedantry of village schoolmasters and curates are 
all satirised with good humour. The play was revised 
in 1597, probably for a performance at Court. It 
was first published next year by Cuthbert Burbie, a 
liveryman of the Stationers' Company with a shop 
in Cornhill adjoining the Royal Exchange,^ and on 
the title-page, which described the piece as * newly 
corrected and augmented,' Shakespeare's name first 
appeared in print as that of author of a play. 

Less gaiety characterised another comedy of the 



of a half-crazed Spaniard known as ' fantastical Monarcho ' who for 
many years hung about Elizabeth's Court, and was under the delusion 
that he owned the ships arriving in the port of London. On his death 
Thomas Churchyard wrote a poem called Fantasticall Monarcho' s 
Epitaph, and mention is made of him in Reginald Scott's Discoverie of 
Witchcraft, 1584, p. 54. The name Armado was doubtless suggested 
by the expedition of 1588. Braggardino in Chapman's Blind Beggar of 
Alexandria, 1598, is drawn on the same lines. The scene {^Love's 
Labour' s Lost, v. ii. 158 seqq.) in which the princess's lovers press their 
suit in the disguise of Russians follows a description of the reception by 
ladies of Elizabeth's Court in 1584 of Russian ambassadors who came 
to London to seek a wife among the ladies of the English nobility 
for the Tsar (cf. Horsey's Travels, ed. E. A. Bond, Hakluyt Soc). 
For further indications of topics of the day treated in the play, see 
*A New Study of "Love's Labour's Lost," ' by the present writer, in 
Gent. Mag. Oct. 1880; and Transactions of the New Shakspere Society, 
pt. iii. p. 80*. The attempt to detect in the schoolmaster Holofernes a 
caricature of the Italian teacher and lexicographer, John Florio, seems 
unjustified (see p. 88 n^. 

1 The printer was William White, of Cow Lane, near the Holborn 
Conduit. 



54 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

same date, ' The Two Gentlemen of Verona,' which 
dramatises a romantic story of love and friendship. 

There is every likelihood that it was an 
Gentlemen adaptation — amounting to a reformation — 

of a lost ' History of FeHx and Philomena,' 
which had been acted at Court in 1584. The story is 
the same as that of ' The Shepardess Felismena ' in 
the Spanish pastoral romance of ' Diana ' by George 
de Montemayor, which long enjoyed popularity in 
England. No complete English translation of LDiana * 
was published before that of Bartholomew Yonge 
in 1598, but a manuscript version by Thomas Wilson, 
which was dedicated to the Earl of Southampton in 
1 596, was possibly circulated far earlier. Some verses 
from ' Diana ' were translated by Sir Philip Sidney 
and were printed with his poems as early as i59i- 
Barnabe Rich's story of ' Apollonius and Silla ' (from 
Cinthio's ' Hecatommithi '), which Shakespeare em- 
ployed again in 'Twelfth Night,' also gave him some 
hints. Trifling and irritating conceits abound in the 
' Two Gentlemen,' but passages of high poetic spirit 
are not wanting, and the speeches of the clowns, 
Launce and Speed — the precursors of a long line 
of whimsical serving-men — overflow with farcical 
drollery. The ' Two Gentlemen ' was not published 
in Shakespeare's lifetime ; it first appeared in the 
folio of 1623, after having, in all probabihty, under- 
gone some revision.^ 

Shakespeare next tried his hand, in the ' Comed) 
of Errors ' (commonly known at the time as 'Errors'), 

1 Cf. Fleay, Li/e, pp. 1 88 seq. 



EARLY DRAMATIC EFFORTS 55 

at boisterous farce. It also was first published in 
1623. Again, as in 'Love's Labour's Lost,' allusion was 
'Comedy made to the civil war in France. France 
of Errors, ^^g described as ' making war against her 
heir' (iii. ii. 125). Shakespeare's farcical comedy, 
which is by far the shortest of all his dramas, may 
have been founded on a play, no longer extant, called 
'The Historic of Error,' which was acted in 1576 at 
Hampton Court. In subject-matter it resembles the 
' Menaechmi ' of Plautus, and treats of mistakes of 
identity arising from the likeness of twin-born 
children. The scene (act iii. sc. i) in which Anti- 
pholus of Ephesus is shut out from his own house, 
while his brother and wife are at dinner within, 
recalls one in the ' Amphitruo ' of Plautus. Shake- 
speare doubtless had direct recourse to Plautus as 
well as to the old play, and he may have read 
Plautus in English. The earliest translation of the 
' Menaechmi ' was not licensed for publication before 
June 10, 1594, and was not published until the 
following year. No translation of any other play 
of Plautus appeared before. But it was stated in the 
preface to this first published translation of the 
' Menaechmi ' that the translator, W. W., doubtless 
William Warner, a veteran of the Elizabethan world 
of letters, had some time previously ' Englished ' that 
and 'divers' others of Plautus's comedies, and had 
circulated them in manuscript * for the use of and 
delight of his private friends, who, in Plautus's own 
words, are not able to understand them.' 

Such plays as these, although each gave promise 



56 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

of a dramatic capacity out of the common way, can- 
not be with certainty pronounced to be beyond the 
abihty of other men. It was in ' Romeo and Juhet,' 
Shakespeare's first tragedy, that he proved himself 
the possessor of a poetic and dramatic instinct of 
unprecedented quaUty. In ' Romeo and JuHet ' he 
turned to account a tragic romance of ItaHan ori- 
' Romeo gii^>^ which was already popular in English 
and Juhet. yersions. Arthur Broke rendered it into 
English verse from the Italian of Bandello in 1562, 
and William Painter had published it in prose in 
his 'Palace of Pleasure' in 1567. Shakespeare made 
little change in the plot as drawn from Bandello by 
Broke, but he impregnated it with poetic fervour, 
and relieved the tragic intensity by developing the 



1 The story, which has been traced back to the Greek romance 
of Anthia and Abrocomas by Xenophon Ephesius, a writer of the 
second century, seems to have been first told in modern Europe about 
1470 by Masuccio in his Novellino (No. xxxiii : cf. Mr. Waters's trans- 
lation, ii. 155-65). It was adapted from Masuccio by Luigi da Porto 
in his novel, La Gnilietta, 1535, and by Bandello in his Novelle, 1554, 
pt. ii. No. ix. Baiidello's version became classical; it was translated 
in the Histoires Tragiques of Francois de Belleforest (Paris, 1559) by 
Pierre Boaistuau de Launay, an occasional collaborator with Belleforest. 
About the same time that Shakespeare was writing Romeo and Juliet, 
Bandello's story was being dramatised by both French and Spanish 
writers. Lope de Vega dramatised the tale in his Spanish play called 
Castelvines y Montescs {i.e. Capulets and Montagus). For an analysis of 
Lope's play, which ends happily, see Variorum Shakespeare, 1 821, xxi. 
451-60. Lope's play appeared in an inaccurate English translation in 
1770, and was rendered literally by Mr. F. W. Cosens in a privately 
printed volume in 1869. Meanwhile a French version of Bandello's 
' Romeo and Juliet ' by Come de la Gambe, called ' Chateauvieux,' 
groom of the chamber to Henri III, was performed in 1580. See 
Clement and De la Porte, Anecdotes drainatiques, Paris, 1775, iii. 107, 



EARLY DRAMATIC EFFORTS 5/ 

humour of Mercutio, and by investing with an en- 
tirely new and comic significance the character of the 
Nurse. ^ The ecstasy of youthful passion is portrayed 
by Shakespeare in language of the highest lyric 
beauty, and although a predilection for quibbles and 
conceits occasionally passes beyond the author's 
control, ' Romeo and Juliet,' as a tragic poem on the 
theme of love, has no rival in any literature. If the 
Nurse's remark, ' 'Tis since the earthquake now 
eleven years' (i. iii. 23), be taken literally, the 
composition of the play must be referred to 1591, 
for no earthquake in the sixteenth century was 
experienced in England after 1580. There are a 
few parallelisms with Daniel's ' Complainte of Rosa- 
mond,' published in 1592, and it is probable that 
Shakespeare completed the piece in that year. The 
piece probably underwent revision after its first 
production.^ The tragedy was in 1597 printed and 
published anonymously and surreptitiously — * as it 
hath been often (with great applause) plaid publiquely 
by the right honourable the L[ord] of Hunsdon 
his servants' — by John Danter, a very notorious 
trader in books, of Hosier Lane, near Holborn Con- 
duit.^ A second quarto of ' Romeo and Juliet ' — 



1 Cf. Originals and Analogues, pt. i, ed. P. A. Daniel, New 
Shakspere Society. 

^ Cf. Parallel Texts, ed. P. A. Daniel, New Shakspere Society ; 
Fleay, Life, pp. 191 seq. 

^ Danter first obtained notoriety in 1593 as the publisher of Thomas 
Nash's scurrilous attacks on the Cambridge scholar Gabriel Harvey. 
Subsequently he enjoyed the unique distinction among Elizabethan 
stationers of being introduced under his own name in the dramatis 



58 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

* newly corrected, augmented, and amended as it hath 
bene sundry times publiquely acted by the right 
honourable the Lord Chamberlaine his servants ' — 
was published, from an authentic version, in 1599, 
by a stationer of higher reputation, Cuthbert Burbie 
of Cornhill.i 

Of the original representation on the stage of three 
other pieces of the period we have more explicit in- 
formation. These reveal Shakespeare undisguisedly as 
an adapter of plays by other hands. Though they lack 
the interest attaching to his unaided work, they throw 
invaluable light on some of his early methods of com- 
position and his early relations with other dramatists. 

On March 3, 1592, a new piece, called 'Henry 
VI,' was acted at the Rose Theatre by Lord Strange's 
. Henry men. It was no doubt the play which was 
^^•' subsequently known as Shakespeare's * The 

First Part of Henry VL' On its first performance it 
won a popular triumph. * How would it have joyed 
brave Talbot (the terror of the French).' wrote Nash 
in his 'Pierce Pennilesse ' (1592, licensed August 8), 
in reference to the striking scenes of Talbot's death 
(act iv. sc. vi and vii), 'to thinke that after he had 
lyne two hundred yeares in his Tombe, hee should 
triumphe againe on the Stage, and have his bones newe 

personcE of an acted play of the period. ' Danter the printer ' figured 
as a trafficker in tlie licentious products of academic youth in the 
academic play of The Retiirne front Parnassus, act i. sc. iii (1600?). 
Besides Romeo and Jitliet, Danter early in 1594 published Titus 
Androniciis (see p. 69). He died in 1597 or 1598. 

1 This quarto was printed for Burbie by Thomas Creede at the 
Katharine Wheel in Thames Street. 



EARLY DRAMATIC EFFORTS 59 

embalmed with the teares of ten thousand spectators 
at least (at severall times) who, in the Tragedian that 
represents his person, imagine they behold him fresh 
bleeding ! ' There is no categorical record of the 
production of a second piece in continuation of the 
theme, but such a play quickly followed ; for a 
third piece, treating of the concluding incidents of 
Henry VI's reign, attracted much attention on the 
stage early in the following autumn. 

The applause attending the completion of this 
historical trilogy caused bewilderment in the theatrical 
profession. The older dramatists awoke to the fact that 
their popularity was endangered by the young stranger 
who had set up his tent in their midst, and one veteran 
uttered without delay a rancorous protest. Robert 
Greene, who died on September 3, 1592, wrote on 
his deathbed an ill-natured farewell to life, entitled ' A 
Greene's Groats-worth of Wit bought with a Million 
attac . ^£ Repentance.' Addressing three brother 
dramatists — Marlowe, Nash, and Peele or Lodge — he 
bade them beware of puppets * that speak from our 
mouths,' and of * antics garnished in our colours.' 
* There is,' he continued, * an upstart Crow, beautified 
with our feathers, that with his Tygej^s heart wrapt in 
a players hide supposes he is as well able to bumbast 
out a blanke verse as the best of you ; and being an 
dihsohitQ Johannes factottim is, in his owne conceit, the 
only Shake-scene in a countrie. . . . Never more 
acquaint [those apes] with your admired inventions, 
for it is pity men of such rare wits should be subject 
to the pleasures of such rude groomes.' The ^only 



6o WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

Shake-scene' is a punning denunciation of Shake- 
speare. The tirade was probably inspired by an 
established author's resentment at the energy of a 
young actor — the theatre's factotum — in revising the 
dramatic work of his seniors with such masterly 
effect as to imperil their hold on the esteem of 
manager and playgoer. The italicised quotation 
travesties a line from the third piece in the trilogy of 
Shakespeare's * Henry VI ' : 

Oh Tiger's heart wrapt in a woman's hide. - 

But Shakespeare's amiability of character and versatile 
ability had already won him admirers, and his suc- 
cesses excited the sympathetic regard of colleagues 
more kindly than Greene. In December 1 592 Greene's 
pubHsher, Henry Chettle, prefixed an apology for 
Chettie's Greene's attack on the young actor to his 
apology. « j^-j^^ Hartes Dreame,' a tract reflecting on 
phases of contemporary social life. 'I am as sory,' 
Chettle wrote, * as if the originall fault had beene 
my fault, because myself e have scene his [_z.e. Shake- 
speare's] demeanour no lesse civillthan he [is] exelent 
in the qualitie he professes, besides divers of worship 
have reported his uprightnes of dealing, which ar- 
gues his honesty, and his facetious grace in writing 
that aprooves his art.' 

The first of -the three plays dealing with the reign 
of Henry VI was originally published in the collected 
edition of Shakespeare's works ; the second and third 
plays were previously printed in a form very dif- 
ferent from that which they subsequently assumed 



EARLY DRAMATIC EFFORTS 6 1 

when they followed the first part in the folio. Cri- 
ticism has proved beyond doubt that in these plays 
Divided Shakespeare did no more than add, revise, 
of'^Hen^y ^nd correct other men's work. In 'The 
^^•' First Part of Henry VI ' the scene in the 

Temple Gardens, where white and red roses are 
plucked as emblems by the rival political parties 
(act ii. sc. iv), the dying speech of Mortimer, and per- 
haps the wooing of Margaret by Suffolk, alone bear the 
impress of his style. A play dealing with the second 
part of Henry VI's reign was published in 1594 
anonymously from a rough stage copy by Thomas 
Millington, a stationer of Cornhill, to whom a license 
for the publication was granted on March 12, 1593-4. 
The volume, which was printed by Thomas Creede 
of Thames Street, bore the title * The first part of the 
Contention betwixt the two famous houses of Yorke 
and Lancaster.' A play dealing with the third part 
of Henry VI's reign was printed with greater care 
next year by Peter Short of Bread Street Hill, and 
was published, as in the case of its predecessor, by 
Millington. This quarto bore the title 'The True 
Tragedie of Richard, Duke of Yorke, and the death 
of good King Henry the Sixt, as it was sundrie 
times acted by the Earl of Pembroke his servants.' ^ 

1 Millington reissued both The Contention and True Tragedie in 
1600, the former being then printed for him by Valentine Simmes (or 
Sims), the latter by William White. On April 19, 1602, Millington 
made over to another publisher, Thomas Pavier, his interest in 'The 
first and second parts of Henry the vf^ ii bookes ' (Arber, iii. 304). 
This entry may be interpreted as implying that Shakespeare's first 
and second parts of Henry VI, which are not known to have been 



62 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

In both these plays Shakespeare's revising hand can 
be traced. The humours of Jack Cade in 'The 
Contention ' can owe their savour to him alone. 
After he had hastily revised the original drafts of 
the three pieces, perhaps with another's aid, they 
were put on the stage in 1592, the first two 
parts by his own company (Lord Strange's men), 
and the third, under some exceptional arrange- 
ment, by Lord Pembroke's men. But Shakespeare 
was not content to leave them thus. Within^a brief 
interval, possibly for a revival, he undertook a more 
thorough revision, still in conjunction with another 
writer. ' The First Part of The Contention ' was 
thoroughly overhauled, and was converted into what 
was entitled in the folio * The Second Part of Henry 
VI ' ; there more than half the lines are new. ' The 
True Tragedie,' which became 'The Third Part of 
Henry VI,' was less drastically handled ; two-thirds 
of it was left practically untouched ; only a third was 
thoroughly remodelled. ^ 

Who Shakespeare's coadjutors were in the two 
successive revisions of ' Henry VI ' is matter for con- 
jecture. The theory that Greene and Peele 
speare's produccd the Original draft of the three 
coa ju ors. ^^^^^ ^^ < Henry VI,' which Shakespeare 

published till they appeared in the First Folio of 1623, were prepared 
for separate publication at an earlier date. But it is more probable 
that the reference is to T/ie Contention and True Tragedie. Pavier, 
to whom Millington assigned the two parts of Henry the vf^ in 1602, 
published a new edition of The Contention in 1619. 

1 Cf. Fleay, Life, pp. 235 seq. ; Trans. New Shakspere Soc, 
1876, pt. ii by Miss Jane Lee; Swinburne, Study, pp. 51 seq. 



EARLY DRAMATIC EFFORTS 63 

recast, may help to account for Greene's indignant 
denunciation of Shakespeare as * an upstart crow, 
beautified with the feathers ' of himself and his 
fellow dramatists. Much can be said, too, in behalf 
of the suggestion that Shakespeare joined Marlowe, 
the greatest of his predecessors, in the first revision 
of which ' The Contention ' and the * True Tragedie ' 
were the outcome. Most of the new passages in the 
second recension seem assignable to Shakespeare 
alone, but a few suggest a partnership resembling 
that of the first revision. It is probable that Marlowe 
began the final revision, but his task was interrupted 
by his death, and the lion's share of the work fell to 
his younger coadjutor. 

Shakespeare shared with other men of genius that 
receptivity of mind which impels them to assimilate 
much of the intellectual effort of their contemporaries 
and to transmute it in the process from unvalued ore 
into pure gold. Had Shakespeare not been profes- 
sionally employed in recasting old plays by contem- 
poraries, he would doubtless have shown in his 
writings traces of a study of their work. The verses 
of Thomas Watson, Samuel Daniel, Michael Drayton, 
Shake- Sir Philip Sidney, and Thomas Lodge were 
sFmuSvr" certainly among the rills which fed the 
power. mighty river of his poetic and lyric in- 
vention. Kyd and Greene, among rival writers of 
tragedy, left more or less definite impression on all 
Shakespeare's early efforts in tragedy. It was, how- 
ever, only to two of his fellow dramatists that his 
indebtedness as a writer of either comedy or tragedy 



64 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

was material or emphatically defined. Superior as 
Shakespeare's powers were to those of Marlowe, his 
coadjutor in * Henry VI, ' his early tragedies often 
reveal him in the character of a faithful disciple of 
that vehement delineator of tragic passion. Shake- 
speare's early comedies disclose a like relationship 
between him and Lyly. 

Lyly is best known as the author of the affected 
romance of ' Euphues,' but between 1580 and 1592 
, . he produced eisfht trivial and insubstantial 

Lyly s ^ . . . . ;^ 

influence comedics, of which six were written in prose, 

in comedy. • i i i t • i 

one was m blank verse, and one was in rhyme. 
Much of the dialogue in Shakespeare's comedies, from 
'Love's Labour's Lost ' to ' Much Ado about Nothing,' 
consists in thrusting and parrying fantastic conceits, 
puns, or antitheses. This is the style of intercourse in 
which most of Lyly's characters exclusively indulge. 
Three-fourths of Lyly's comedies lightly revolve 
about topics of classical or fairy mythology — in the 
very manner which Shakespeare first brought to a 
triumphant issue in his ' Midsummer Night's Dream.' 
Shakespeare's treatment of eccentric characters like 
Don Armado in * Love's Labour's Lost ' and his boy 
Moth reads like a reminiscence of Lyly's portrayal of 
Sir Thopas, a fat vainglorious knight, and his boy 
Epiton in the comedy of ' Endymion,' while the watch- 
men in the same play clearly adumbrate Shake- 
speare's Dogberry and Verges. The device of mascu- 
line disguise for love-sick maidens was characteristic 
of Lyly's method before Shakespeare ventured on 
it for the first of many times. in * Two Gentlemen 



EARLY DRAMATIC EFFORTS 6$ 

of Verona,' and the dispersal through Lyly's come- 
dies of songs possessing every lyrical charm is not 
the least interesting of the many striking features 
which Shakespeare's achievements in comedy seem 
to borrow from Lyly's comparatively insignificant 
experiments.^ 

Marlowe, who alone of Shakespeare's contem- 
poraries can be credited with exerting on his efforts 
in tragedy a really substantial influence, was in 
1592 and 1593 at the zenith of his fame. 
influence Two of Shakcspcarc's earliest historical 
in tragedy. ^^^^^^^^^^ . Richard III ' and ' Richard II,' 

with the story of Shylock in his somewhat later 
comedy of the ' Merchant of Venice,' plainly disclose 
a conscious resolve to follow in Marlowe's footsteps. 
In * Richard III ' Shakespeare, working singlehanded, 
takes up the history of England near the point at 
which Marlowe and he, apparently working in part- 
nership, left it in the third part of * Henry VI.' 
The subject was already familiar to dramatists, but 
Shakespeare sought his materials in the * Chronicle ' 
of Holinshed. A Latin piece, by Dr. Thomas Legge, 
' Richard had been in favour with academic audiences 
^^^" since 1579, and in 1594 the 'True Tragedie 

of Richard III ' from some other pen was published 

1 In later life Shakespeare,^ in Hamlet, borrows from Lyly's 
Euphues Polonius's advice to Laertes; but, however he may have 
regarded the moral sentiment of that didactic romance, he had no 
respect for the affectations of its prose style, which he ridiculed in 
a familiar passage in i Henry IV, 11. iv. 445 : ' For though the 
camomile, the moi*e it is trodden on, the faster it grows, yet youth the 
more it is wasted, the sooner it wears.' 
* F ■ 



66 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

anonymously ; but Shakespeare's piece bears little 
resemblance to either. Throughout Shakespeare's 
'Richard III' the effort to emulate Marlowe is undeni- 
able. The tragedy is, says Mr. Swinburne, 'as fiery in 
passion, as single in purpose, as rhetorical often, 
though never so inflated in expression, as Marlowe's 
" Tamburlaine " itself.' The turbulent piece was 
naturally popular. Burbage's impersonation of the 
hero was one of his most effective performances, and 
his vigorous enunciation of 'A horse, a hoTse ! my 
kingdom for a horse ! ' gave the line proverbial 
currency. 

' Richard II ' seems to have followed ' Richard III ' 
without 'delay. Subsequently both were published 
anonymously in the same year (1597) as they had 
' been publike ly acted by the right Honourable the 
Lorde Chamberlaine his servants ' ; ^ but the de- 
position scene in ' Richard II,' which dealt with a 
topic distasteful to the Queen, was omitted from the 

1 Andrew Wise, who occupied the shop at the sign of the Angel 
in St. Paul's Churchyard for the ten years that he was in trade — 1593- 
1603 — was the first publisher to issue any of Shakespeare's wholly 
authentic plays. He secured licenses for the publication o^ Richard II 
and Richard III on August 29 and October 20, 1597, respectively. 
Both volumes were printed for Wise by Valentine Simmes (or Sims), 
whose printing-office was at the White Swan, at the foot of AdUng 
Hill, near Baynard's Castle. Second editions of each were issued 
by Wise in 159S; Richard II was again printed by Simmes, but 
the second quarto of Richard III was printed by Thomas Creede at 
the Katharine Wheel in Thames Street. In 1602 Creede printed for 
Wise a third edition o{ Richard III ^ newly revised.' On January 25, 
1603, Wise made over his interest in both Richard II diXid Richard III 
to Matthew Lawe of St. Paul's Churchyard, who reissued Richard III 
in 1605, 1612, 1622, and 1629, and Richard II va. 1608 and 1615. 



EARLY DRAMATIC EFFORTS 6/ 

impressions of 1597 and 1598, and it was first supplied 
in the quarto of 1608. Prose is avoided throughout 
' Richard the play, a certain sign of early work. The 
^^' piece was probably composed very early in 

1593. Marlowe's tempestuous vein is less apparent 
in 'Richard I r than in 'Richard II L' But if ' Richard 
IP be in style and treatment less deeply indebted 
to Marlowe than its predecessor, it was clearly 
suggested by Marlowe's ' Edward II.' Throughout 
its exposition of the leading theme — the development 
and collapse of the weak King's character — Shake- 
speare's historical tragedy closely imitates Marlowe's. 
Shakespeare drew the facts from Holinshed, but his 
embellishments are numerous, and include the mag- 
nificently eloquent eulogy of England which is set in 
the mouth of John of Gaunt. 

In ' As You Like It ' (iii. v. 80) Shakespeare 
parenthetically commemorated his acquaintance with, 
. , and his 2:eneral indebtedness to, the elder 

Acknow- ^ ' 

ledgments dramatist by apostrophisins^ him in the 

to Marlowe. J r r o 

lines : 

Dead Shepherd ! now I find thy saw of might : 
' Who ever loved that loved not at first sight ? ' 

The second line is a quotation from Marlowe's poem 
' Hero and Leander ' (line y6). In the ' Merry Wives 
of Windsor' (iii. i. 17-21)' Shakespeare places in the 
mouth of Sir Hugh Evans snatches of verse from 
Marlowe's charming lyric, ' Come live with me and be 
my love.' 

Between February 1593 and the end of the year 



6S WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

the London theatres were closed, owing to the pre- 
valence of the plague, and Shakespeare doubtless 
travelled with his company in the country. But his 
pen was busily employed, and before the close of 
1594 he gave marvellous proofs of his rapid powers 
of production. 

* Titus Andronicus ' was in his own lifetime 
claimed for Shakespeare, but Edward Ravenscroft, 
'Titus An- who prepared a new version in 1678, wrote 
dronicus.' of it : 'I have been told by some anciently 
conversant with the stage that it was not originally 
his, but brought by a private author to be acted, and 
he only gave some master-touches to one or two 
of the principal parts or characters.' Ravenscroft's 
assertion deserves acceptance. The sanguinary tragedy 
presents a fictitious episode illustrative of the deca- 
dence of Imperial Rome; it contains powerful lines and 
situations, but the repulsive plot and the ostentatious 
classical allusions differentiate it from Shakespeare's 
acknowledged work. Ben Jonson credits ' Titus 
Andronicus * with a popularity equalling Kyd's 
* Spanish Tragedy,' and internal evidence shows that 
Kyd was capable of writing much of ' Titus.' It 
was suggested by a piece called 'Titus and Vespasian/ 
which Lord Strange's men played on April 11, 1592;^ 
this is only extant in a German version acted 
by EngHsh players in Germany, and pubHshed in 
1620.2 * Titus Andronicus' was obviously taken in hand 
soon after the production of ' Titus and Vespasian ' 
in order to exploit popular interest in the topic. It 

1 Henslowe, p. 24. 

2 Cf. Cohn, Shakespeare in Germany ^ pp. 155 et seq. 



EARLY DRAMATIC EFFORTS 69 

was acted by the Earl of Sussex's men on January 
23, 1593-4, when it was described as a new piece ; but 
that it was also acted subsequently by Shakespeare's 
company is shown by the title-page of the first edition 
of 1 594, which describes it as having been performed 
by the Earl of Derby's servants (one of the successive 
titles of Shakespeare's company), as well as by those 
of the Earls of Pembroke and Sussex. In the title- 
page of the second edition of 1600, addition was made 
to these three noblemen of the Lord Chamberlain, who 
was the Earl of Derby's successor in the patronage of 
Shakespeare's company. The piece was entered on the 
'Stationers' Register' on February 6, 1594, ^^ John 
Danter, the printer, of Hosier Lane, who produced the 
first (imperfect) quarto of 'Romeo and Juliet.' Danter's 
edition of ' Titus ' was published in 1 594, without the 
playwright's supervision, jointly by Edward White, 
whose shop * at the little North doore of Paules ' bore, 
as the title-page stated, ' the sign of the gun,' and by 
Thomas Millington, whose shop, unmentioned in the 
title-page, was in CornhilL^ A second edition of the 
play was published solely by Edward White in 1600. 
This edition was printed by James Roberts, of the 
Barbican, who was printer and publisher of 'the 
players' bills ' or programmes of the theatre. ^ 

1 Only one copy of this quarto is known. Its existence was noticed 
by Langbaine in 1691, but no copy was found to confirm Langbaine's 
statement until January 1905, when an exemplar was discovered among 
the books of a Swedish gentleman of Scottish descent, named Robson, 
who resided at Lund (cf. AthencBum, Jan. 21, 1905). The quarto was 
promptly purchased by an American collector for 2,000/. 

2 This office Roberts purchased in 1594 of John Charlewood, and 
held it till 1615, when he sold it to William Jaggard. 



70 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

For part of the plot of 'The Merchant of Venice,' 
in which two romantic love stories are skilfully 
blended with a theme of tragic import, Shakespeare 
had recourse to ' II Pecorone,' a fourteenth-century 
'Merchant Collection of Italian novels by Ser Giovanni 
of Venice.' piorentino.^ There a Jewish creditor de- 
mands a pound of flesh of a defaulting Christian 
debtor, and the latter is rescued through the advo- 
cacy of * the lady of Belmont,' who is wife of the 
debtor's friend. The management of the plat in the 
Italian novel is closely followed by Shakespeare. 
A similar story is slenderly outlined in the popular 
mediaeval collection of anecdotes called 'Gesta Roma- 
norum,' while the tale of the caskets, which Shake- 
speare combined with it in the 'Merchant,' is told 
independently in another portion of the same work. 
But Shakespeare's ' Merchant ' owes much to other 
sources, including more than one old play. - Stephen 
Gosson describes in his ' Schoole of Abuse' (1579) 
a lost play called 'the Jew . . . showne at the Bull 
[inn] . . . representing the greedinesse of worldly 
chusers and bloody mindes of usurers.' This descrip- 
tion suggests that the two stories of the pound of 
flesh and the caskets had been combined before for 
purposes of dramatic representation. The scenes 
in Shakespeare's play in which Antonio negotiates 
with Shylock are roughly anticipated, too, by dia- 
logues between a Jewish creditor Gerontus and 
a Christian debtor in the extant play of ' The Three 

1 Cf. W. G. Waters's translation of II Pecorone, pp. 44-60 (fourth 
day, novel i). The collection was not published till 1558, and the 
story followed by Shakespeare was not accessible in his day in any 
language but the original Italian, 



EARLY DRAMATIC EFFORTS 7 1 

Ladies of London,' by R[obert] W[ilson], 1584. 
There the Jew opens the attack on his Christian 
debtor with the Hnes : 

Signor Mercatore, why do you not pay me ? Think you I will be 
mocked in this sort ? 

This three times you have flouted me — it seems you make thereat a 
sport. 

Truly pay me my money, and that even now presently, 

Or by mighty Mahomet, I swear I will forthwith arrest thee. 

Subsequently, when the judge is passing judgment in 
favour of the debtor, the Jew interrupts : 

Stay, there, most puissant judge. Signor Mercatore, consider what 
you do. 

Pay me the principal, as for the interest I forgive it you. 

Above all is it of interest to note that Shakespeare 
in * The Merchant of Venice ' betrays the last defina- 
ble traces of his discipleship to Marlowe. Although 
the delicate comedy which lightens the serious interest 
of Shakespeare's play sets it in a wholly dif- 
and Rode- fereut Category from that of Marlowe's ' Jew 
rigo opez. ^^ Malta,' the humanised portrait of the Jew 
Shylock embodies distinct reminiscences of Marlowe's 
caricature of the Jew Barabbas. But Shakespeare 
soon outpaced his master, and the inspiration that 
he drew from Marlowe in the 'Merchant' touches 
only the general conception of the central figure. 
Doubtless the popular interest aroused by the trial 
in February 1594 and the execution in June of the 
Queen's Jewish physician, Roderigo Lopez, incited 
Shakespeare to a new and subtler study of Jewish 



72 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

character.^ For Shylock (not the merchant Antonio) 
is the hero of the play, and the main interest cul- 
minates in the Jew's trial and discomfiture. The 
bold transition from that solemn scene which 
trembles on the brink of tragedy to the gently 
poetic and humorous incidents of the concluding 
act attests a mastery of stagecraft; but the in- 
terest, although it is sustained to the end, is, after 
Shylock's final exit, pitched in a lower key. The 
'Venesyon Comedy,' which Henslowe, the mx^nager, 
produced at the Rose on August 25, 1594, was proba- 
bly the earliest version of * The Merchant of Venice,' 



1 Lopez was the Earl of Leicester's physician before 1586, and the 
Queen's chief physician from that date. An accomplished linguist, with 
friends in all parts of Europe, he acted in 1590, at the request of the Earl 
of Essex, as interpreter to Antonio Perez, a victim of Philip II's perse- 
cution, whom Essex and his associates brought to England in order to 
stimulate the hostility of the English public to Spain. Don Antonio (as 
the refugee was popularly called) proved querulous and exacting. A 
quarrel between Lopez and Essex followed. Spanish agents in London 
offered Lopez a bribe to poison Antonio and the Queen. The evidence 
that he assented to the murderous proposal is incomplete, but he was 
convicted of treason, and, although the Queen long delayed signing his 
death-warrant, he was hanged at Tyburn on June 7, 1594. His trial 
and execution evoked a marked display of anti-Semitism on the part 
of the London populace. Very few Jews were domiciled in England 
at the time. That a Christian named Antonio should be the cause of 
the ruin alike of the greatest Jew in Elizabethan England and of the 
greatest Jew of the Elizabethan drama is a curious confirmation of the 
theory that Lopez was the begetter of Shylock. Cf. the article on 
Roderigo Lopez in the Dictionary of National Biography ; ' The 
Original of Shylock,' by the present writer, in Gent. Mag. February 
1880; Dr. H. Graetz, Shylock in den Sagen, in den Dramen und in 
der Geschichte, Krotoschin, 1880; New Shakspere Soc. Trans. 1887-92, 
pt. ii. pp. 158-92 ; ' The Conspiracy of Dr. Lopez,' by the Rev. Arthur 
Dimock, in English Historical Review (1894), ix. 440 seq. 



EARLY DRAMATIC EFFORTS 73 

and it was revised later. On July 17, 1598, the 
notorious James Roberts, who printed ' Titus Andro- 
nieus ' and other of Shakespeare's plays, secured a 
license from the Stationers' Company for the publi- 
cation of 'The Merchaunt of Venyce, or otherwise 
called the Jewe of Venyce,' on condition that the 
Lord Chamberlain gave his assent to the publication. ^ 
It was not published till 1600, when two editions 
appeared, each printed from a different stage copy.^ 
To 1594 must also be assigned * King John,' 
which, like the * Comedy of Errors ' and * Richard II,' 
altogether eschews prose. The piece, which was not 
printed till 1623, was directly adapted from a worthless 
• King play called * The Troublesome Raigne of 

John.' King John' (1591), which was fraudulently 

reissued in 161 1 as ' written by W. Sh.,' and in 1622 as 
by ' W. Shakespeare.' There is very small ground for 
associating Marlowe's name with the old play. Into 
the adaptation Shakespeare flung all his energy, and 
the theme grew under his hand into genuine tragedy. 
The three chief characters — the mean and cruel king, 

1 Arber, Stationers' Registers, iii. 122. 

2 Both editions came from Roberts's press, and Roberts published 
as well as printed the first quarto, which is more carefully printed 
than the second. Thomas Heyes (or Hayes) was the publisher of the 
second edition, and to him was formally granted the whole of Roberts's 
interest in the M^ork by the Stationers' Company on October 28, 
1600 (Arber, Transcript, iii. 175). Roberts was merely employed 
by Heyes to print the second quarto. Heyes's quarto was the 
text selected by the editors of ^,he First Folio. Heyes attached some 
pecuniary value to his publishing rights in The Merchant of Venice. 
On July 8, 1619, his son, Laurence, as heir to his father paid a fee to 
the Stationers' Company on their granting him a formal recognition of 
his exclusive interest in the publication (Arber, iii. 651). 



74 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

the noblehearted and desperately wronged Constance, 
and the soldierly humourist, Faulconbridge — are in 
all essentials of his own invention, and are portrayed 
with the same sureness of touch that marked in 
Shylock his rapidly maturing strength. The scene, in 
which the gentle boy Arthur learns from Hubert that 
the King has ordered his eyes to be put out, is as 
affecting as any passage in tragic literature. 

At the close of 1594 a performance of Shake- 
speare's early farce, ' The Comedy of Errors,' gave 
him a passing notoriety that he could well have 
spared. The piece was played on the evening of 
Innocents' Day (December 28), 1594, in the hall 
'Comedy of Gray's Inn, before a crowded audience 
in Grab's ^^ benchcrs, students, and their friends. 
Inn Hall. There was some disturbance during the 
evening on the part of guests from the Inner Temple, 
who, dissatisfied with the accommodation afforded 
them, retired in dudgeon. ' So that night,' the con- 
temporary chronicler states, * was begun and con- 
tinued to the end in nothing but confusion and errors, 
whereupon it was ever afterwards called the " Night 
of Errors." '^ Shakespeare was acting on the same 
day before the Queen at Greenwich, and it is doubtful 
if he were present. On the morrow a commission 
of oyer and terminer inquired into the causes of the 
tumult, which was attributed to a sorcerer having 
' foisted a company of base and common fellows to 

^ Ges/a Grayorum, printed in 1688 from a contemporary manu- 
script. A second performance of the Comedy of E7'rors was given at 
Gray's Inn Hall by the Elizabethan Stage Society on Dec. 6, 1895. 



EARLY DRAMATIC EFFORTS 75 

make up our disorders with a play of errors and con- 
fusions.' 

Two plays of uncertain authorship attracted, public 
attention during the period under review (159 1-4) — 
* Arden of Feversham ' (licensed for publication April 3, 
1 592, and published in i592)a"nd 'Edward III '(licensed 
for publication December i, 1595, and published in 
1596). Shakespeare's hand has been traced in both, 
mainly on the ground that their dramatic energy is of 
a quality not to be discerned in the work of any 
contemporary whose writings are extant. There 
is no external evidence in favour of Shakespeare's 
authorship in either case. * Arden of Feversham ' 
Earl la s ^ramatises with intensity and insight a 
doubtfully sordid murder of a husband by a wife which 

assigned to , •' 

Shake- took place at Faversham in 155 1, and was 
fully reported by Holinshed. The subject 
is of a different type from any which Shakespeare is 
known to have treated, and although the play maybe, 
as Mr. Swinburne insists, ' a young man's work,' it 
bears no relation either in topic or style to the work 
on which young Shakespeare was engaged at a period 
so early as 1591 or 1592. 'Edward III' is a play in 
Marlowe's vein, and has been assigned to Shakespeare 
on even more shadowy grounds. Capell reprinted it 
in his * Prolusions ' in 1760, and described it as 
' thought to be writ by Shakespeare.' Many speeches 
scattered through the drama, and one whole scene — 
that in which the Countess of Salisbury repulses the 
advances of Edward III — show the hand of a master 
(act ii. sc. ii). But there is even in the style of 



76 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

these contributions much to dissociate them from 
Shakespeare's acknowledged productions, and to 
justify their ascription to some less gifted disciple of 
Marlowe.^ A line in act ii. sc. i ('Lilies that fester ► 
smell far worse than weeds') reappears in Shake- 
speare's 'Sonnets' (xciv. 1. 14).^ It was contrary to 
his practice to literally plagiarise himself. The line 
in the play was doubtless borrowed from a manu- 
script copy of the * Sonnets.' 

Two other popular plays of the period, * Muce- 
dorus ' and * Faire Em,' have also been assigned to 
•Muce- Shakespeare on slighter provocation. In 
dorus.' Charles II's library they were bound to- 
gether in a volume labelled * Shakespeare, Vol. I,' and 
bold speculators have occasionally sought to justify 
the misnomer. 

* Mucedorus,' an elementary effort in romantic 
comedy, dates from the early years of Elizabeth's 
reign ; it was first published, doubtless after under- 
going revision, in 1595, and was reissued, 'amplified 
with new additions,' in 1610. Mr. Payne Collier, who 
included it in his privately printed edition of Shake- 
speare in 1878, was confident that a scene interpolated 
in the 1610 version (in which the King of Valentia 
laments the supposed loss of his son) displayed 
genius which Shakespeare alone could compass. 
However readily critics may admit the superiority in 
literary value of the interpolated scene to anything 
else in the piece, few will accept Mr. Collier's ex- 
travagant estimate. The scene was probably from 

1 Cf. Swinburne, Study of Shakspere, pp. 231-74. 2 ggg p^ q^. 



EARLY DRAMATIC EFFORTS 7/ 

the pen of an admiring but faltering imitator of 
Shakespeare.^ 

*Faire Em,' although not published till 163 1, was 
acted by Shakespeare's company while Lord Strange 
'Faire was its patron, and some lines from it are 
^"^' quoted for purposes of ridicule by Robert 

Greene in his 'Farewell to Folly' in 1592. It is 
another rudimentary endeavour in romantic comedy, 
and has not even the pretension of * Mucedorus * to 
one short scene of conspicuous literary merit. 

1 Cf. Dodsley's Old Plays, ed. W. C. Hazlitt, 1874, vii. 236-8. 



78 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 



VI 

THE FIRST APPEAL TO THE READING PUBLIC 

During the busy years (i 591-4) that witnessed 
his first pronounced successes as a dramatist, Shake- 
speare came before the public in yet another literary 
capacity. On April 18, 1593, Richard Field, the 
printer, who was his fellow-townsman, obtained a 
license for the publication of ' Venus and Adonis,' a 
Pubiica- metrical version of a classical tale of love. 
' Venu^sand ^^ ^^^ published a month or two later, with- 
Adonis." Q^^ g^^ author's name on the title-page, but 
Shakespeare appended his full name to the dedication, 
which he addressed in conventional style to Henry 
Wriothesley, third Earl of Southampton. The Earl, 
who was in his twentieth year, was reckoned the 
handsomest man at Court, with a pronounced dis- 
position to gallantry. He had vast possessions, 
was well educated, loved literature, and through life 
extended to men of letters a generous patronage.^ 
' I know not how I shall offend,' Shakespeare now 
wrote to him, * in dedicating my unpolished lines 
to your lordship, nor how the world will censure me 
for choosing so strong a prop to support so weak 
a burden. . . . But if the first heir of my invention 
prove deformed, I shall be sorry it had so noble 

1 See Appendix, sections ill and iv. 



FIRST APPEAL TO THE READING PUBLIC 79 

a godfather.' 'The first heir of my invention' 
implies that the poem was written, or at least de- 
signed, before Shakespeare's dramatic work. It is 
affluent in beautiful imagery and metrical sweetness, 
but imbued with a tone of license which may be held 
either to justify the theory that it was a precocious 
product of the author's youth, or to show that Shake- 
speare was not unready in mature years to write with 
a view to gratifying a patron's somewhat lascivious 
tastes. The title-page bears a beautiful Latin, motto 
from Ovid's ' Amores ' : ^ 

Vilia miretur vulgus ; mihi flavus Apollo 
Pocula Castalia plena ministret aqua. 

The influence of Ovid, who told the story in his 
' Metamorphoses,' is apparent in many of the details. 
But the theme was doubtless first suggested to 
Shakespeare by a contemporary effort. Lodge's 
' Scillaes Metamorphosis,' which appeared in 1589, is 
not only written in the same metre (six-line stanzas 
rhyming a b a b c c), but narrates in the exordium 
the same incidents in the same spirit. There is 
little doubt that Shakespeare drew from Lodge some 
of his inspiration.^ 

1 See Ovid's Amores, liber i. elegy xv. 11. 35-6. Ovid's Amores, 
or Elegies of Love, v^^ere translated by Marlowe about 1589, and vi^ere 
first printed without a date on the title-page, probably about 1597. 
Marlowe's version had probably been accessible in manuscript in the 
eight years' interval. Marlowe rendered the lines quoted by Shakespeare 

thus : 

Let base conceited wits admire vile things. 
Fair Phoebus lead me to the Muses' springs ! 

2 Shakespeare's Venus and Adonis and Lodge's Scillaes Metamor- 
phosis, by James P. Reardon, in ' Shakespeare Society's Papers,' iii. 



80 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

A year after the issue of 'Venus and Adonis,' 
in 1594, Shakespeare published another poem in 
like vein, but far more mature in temper and execu- 
tion. The digression (11. 939-59) on the destroying 
power of Time, especially, is in an exalted key of medi- 
tation which is not sounded in the earlier poem. The 
metre, too, is changed ; seven-line stanzas (Chaucer's 
rhyme royal, a b a b b c c) take the place of six-line 
stanzas. The second poem was entered in the ' Sta- 
tioners' Registers' on May 9, 1594, under the title 
of ' A Booke intitled the Ravyshement of 

'Lucrece.' i i. i t . i 

Lucrece, and was published m the same year 
under the title * Lucrece.' Richard Field printed it, 
and John Harrison published and sold it at the sign 
of the White Greyhound in St. Paul's Churchyard. 
The classical story of Lucretia's ravishment and 
suicide is briefly recorded in Ovid's ' Fasti,' but 
Chaucer had retold it in his ' Legend of Good 
Women,' and Shakespeare must have read it there. 
Again, in topic and metre, the poem reflected a 
contemporary poet's work. Samuel Daniel's * Com- 

143-6. Cf. Lodge's description of Venus's discovery of the wounded 
Adonis : 

Her daintie hand addrest to dawe her deere, 
Her roseall lip alied to his pale cheeke, 
Her sighs and then her lookes and heavie cheere. 
Her bitter threates, and then her passions meeke; 
How on his senseles corpse she lay a-crying, 
As if the boy were then but new a-dying. 

In the minute description in Shakespeare's poem of the chase of 
the hare (11. 673-708) there are curious resemblances to the Ode de la 
Chasse (on a stag hunt) by the French dramatist, Estienne Jodelle, in 
his (Euvres et Meslanges PoeiiqueSy 1574. 



FIRST APPEAL TO THE READING PUBLIC 8 1 

plaint of Rosamond,' with its seven-line stanza 
(1592), stood to 'Lucrece' in even closer relation 
than Lodge's ' Scilla,' with its six-line stanza, to 
'Venus and Adonis.' The pathetic accents of Shake- 
speare's heroine are those of Daniel's heroine purified 
and glorified.^ The passage on Time is elaborated 
from one in Watson's * Passionate Centurie of Love ' 
(No. Ixxvii).^ Shakespeare dedicated his second 
volume of poetry to the Earl of Southampton, the 
patron of his first. He addressed him in terms of 
devoted friendship, which were not uncommon at 
the time in communications between patrons and 
poets, but suggest that Shakespeare's relations with 
the brilliant young nobleman had grown closer since 

1 Rosamond, in Daniel's poem, muses thus when King Henry chal- 
lenges her honour : 

But what ? he is my King and may constraine me; 
Whether I yeeld or not, I live defamed. 
The World will thinke Authoritie did gaine me, 
I shall be judg'd his Love and so be shamed; 
We see the faire condemn'd that never gamed, 

And if I yeeld, 'tis honourable shame. 

If not, I live disgrac'd, yet thought the same. 

2 Watson makes this comment on his poem or passion on Time 
(No. Ixxvii) : * The chiefe contentes of this Passion are taken out of 
Seraphine [_i.e. Serafino], Sonnet 132: 

Col tempo passa[n] gli anni, i mesi, e I'hore, 
Col tempo le richeze, imperio, e regno. 
Col tempo fama, honor, fortezza, e ingegno. 
Col tempo giouentvi, con belta more, &c.' 

Watson adds that he has inverted Serafino's order for * rimes 
sake,' or ' upon some other more allowable consideration.' Shake- 
speare was also doubtless acquainted with Giles Fletcher's similar 
handling of the theme in Sonnet xxviii of his collection of sonnets 
called Licia (1593). 

G 



82 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

he dedicated 'Venus and Adonis' to him in colder 
language a year before. * The love I dedicate to 
your lordship/ Shakespeare wrote in the opening 
pages of ' Lucrece,' ' is without end, whereof this pam- 
phlet without beginning is but a superfluous moiety. 
. . . What I have done is yours ; what I have to do 
is yours ; being part in all I have, devoted yours.' 

In these poems Shakespeare made his earliest 
appeal to the world of readers, and the reading 
Enthusias- public welcomcd his addresses with-unqua- 
tion^oTthe li^ed enthusiasm. The London playgoer 
poems. already knew Shakespeare's name as that of 
a promising actor and playwright, but his dramatic 
efforts had hitherto been consigned in manuscript, 
as soon as the theatrical representation ceased, to the 
coffers of their owner, the playhouse manager. His 
early plays brought him at the outset little repu- 
tation as a man of letters. It was not as the myriad- 
minded dramatist, but in the restricted role of adapter 
for English readers of familiar Ovidian fables, that he 
first impressed a wide circle of his contemporaries with 
the fact of his mighty genius. The perfect sweetness of 
the verse, and the poetical imagery in * Venus and 
Adonis ' and ' Lucrece ' practically silenced censure 
of the licentious treatment of the themes on the part 
of the seriously minded. Critics vied with each 
other in the exuberance of the eulogies in which 
they proclaimed that the fortunate author had gained 
a place in permanence on the summit of Parnassus. 
' Lucrece,' wrote Michael Drayton in his ' Legend of 
Matilda ' (i 594), was ' revived to live another age.' In 



FIRST APPEAL TO THE READING PUBLIC 83 

1595 William Gierke in his ' Polimanteia' gave 'all 
praise' to 'sweet Shakespeare' for his 'Lucrecia.' John 
Weever, in a sonnet addressed to * honey-tongued 
Shakespeare' in his 'Epigramms' (1595), eulogised 
the two poems as an unmatchable achievement, al- 
though he mentioned the plays * Romeo ' and ' Richard ' 
and 'more whose names I know not.' Richard Carew 
at the same time classed him with Marlowe as deserv- 
ing the praises of an Enghsh Catullus. 1 Printers and 
publishers of the poems strained their resources to 
satisfy the demands of eager purchasers. No fewer 
than seven editions of ' Venus ' appeared between 
1 594 and 1 602 ; an eighth followed in 1 6 1 7. ' Lucrece ' 
achieved a fifth edition in the year of Shakespeare's 
death. 

There is a likeHhood, too, that Spenser, the greatest 
of Shakespeare's poetic contemporaries, was first drawn 

by the poems into the ranks of Shakespeare's 
speare and admirers. It is hardly doubtful that Spenser 

described Shakespeare in ' Colin Clouts 
come home againe' (completed in 1594), under the 
name of 'Action' — ^a familiar Greek proper name 
derived from aero^i, an eagle : 

And there, though last not least is Aetion; 

A gentler Shepheard may no where be found, 
Whose muse, full of high thought's invention. 

Doth, like himselfe, heroically sound. 

The last line seems to -allude to Shakespeare's sur- 
name. We may assume that the admiration was 

1 * Excellencie of the English Tongue ' in Camden's Remaines, 
p. 43- 



84 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

mutual. At any rate Shakespeare acknowledged 
acquaintance with Spenser's work in a plain reference 
to his 'Teares of the Muses' (i 591) in 'Midsummer 
Night's Dream' (v. i. 52-3). 

The thrice three Muses, mourning for the death 
Of learning, late deceased in beggary, 

is Stated to be the theme of one of the dramatic en- 
tertainments wherewith it is proposed to celebrate 
Theseus's marriage. In Spenser's ' Teares of the 
Muses' each of the Nine laments in turn her declin- 
ing influence on the literary and dramatic effort of 
the age. Theseus dismisses the suggestion with the 
not inappropriate comment : 

That is some satire keen and critical, 
Not sorting with a nuptial ceremony. 

But there is no ground for assuming that Spenser in 
the same poem referred figuratively to Shakespeare 
when he made Thalia deplore the recent death of 'our 
pleasant Willy.' ^ The name Willy was frequently 
used in contemporary literature as a term of 
familiarity without relation to the baptismal name 
of the person referred to. Sir Philip Sidney was 

1 All these and all that els the Comick Stage 
With seasoned wit and goodly pleasance graced. 
By which mans life in his likest image 
Was limned forth, are wholly now defaced . . , 
And he, the man whom Nature selfe had made 
To mock her selfe and Truth to imitate, 
With kindly counter under mimick shade. 
Our pleasant Willy, ah! is dead of late; 
With whom all joy and jolly meriment 
Is also deaded and in dolour drent (11. 199-210). 



FIRST APPEAL TO THE READING PUBLIC 85 

addressed as * Willy ' by some of his elegists. A comic 
actor, ' dead of late ' in a literal sense, was clearly 
intended by Spenser, and there is no reason to dispute 
the view of an early seventeenth-century commentator 
that Spenser was paying a tribute to the loss English 
comedy had lately sustained by the death of the 
comedian, Richard Tarleton.i Similarly the 'gentle 
spirit ' who is described by Spenser in a later stanza 
as sitting *in idle cell' rather than turn his pen 
to base uses cannot be reasonably identified with 
Shakespeare.^ 

Meanwhile Shakespeare was gaining personal 
esteem outside the circles of actors and men of 
letters. His genius and ' civil demeanour ' of which 
Chettle wrote arrested the notice not only of South- 
ampton but of other noble patrons of literature 
and the drama. His summons to act at Court 
with the most famous actors of the day at the 
Patrons at Christmas of 1594 was possibly due in part 
Court. ^Q personal interest in himself. Elizabeth 
quickly showed him special favour. Until the end of 
her reign his plays were repeatedly acted in her 
presence. The revised version of * Love's Labour's 



1 A note to this effect, in a genuine early seventeenth-century hand, 
was discovered by Halliwell-Phillipps in a copy of the 161 1 edition of 
Spenser's Works (cf. Outlines, ii. 394-5). 

2 But that same gentle spirit, from whose pen 
Large streames of honnie and sweete nectar flowe. 
Scorning the boldnes of such base-borne men 
Which dare their folHes forth so rashlie throwe, , 

Doth rather choose to sit in idle cell 
Than so himselfe to mockerie to sell (11. 217-22), 



86 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

Lost* was given at Whitehall at Christmas 1597, and 
tradition credits the Queen with unconcealed enthu- 
siasm for Falstaff, who came into being a little later. 
Under Elizabeth's successor he greatly strengthened 
his hold on royal favour, but Ben Jonson claimed 
that the Queen's appreciation equalled that of 
James I. When Jonson wrote in his elegy on Shake- 
speare of 

Those flights upon the banks of Thames 
That so did take Ehza and our James, 

he was mindful of many representations of Shake- 
speare's plays by the poet and his fellow-actors at 
the palaces of Whitehall, Richmond, or Greenwich 
during the last decade of Elizabeth's reign. 



THE SONNETS AND THEIR LITERARY HISTORY 8/ 



VII 

THE SONNETS AND THEIR LITERARY HISTORY 



• 



It was doubtless to Shakespeare's personal rela- 
tions with men and women of the Court that his 
sonnets owed their existence. In Italy and France the 
practice of writing and circulating series of sonnets in- 
The vogue scribed to great men and women flourished 
bethan'^^^" contiuuously throughout the sixteenth cen- 
sonnet. tury. In England, until the last decade of 
that century, the vogue was intermittent. Wyatt and 
Surrey inaugurated sonnetteering in the English 
language under Henry VIII, and Thomas Watson 
devoted much energy to the pursuit when Shake- 
speare was a boy. But it was not until 1591, when 
Sir Philip Sidney's collection of sonnets entitled 
' Astrophel and Stella ' was first published, that the 
sonnet enjoyed in England any conspicuous or con- 
tinuous favour. For the half-dozen years following 
the appearance of Sir Philip Sidney's volume the 
writing of sonnets, both singly and in connected se- 
quences, engaged more literary activity in this country 
than it engaged at any period here or elsewhere. ^ 

1 Section IX of the Appendix to this volume gives a sketch of each 
of the numerous collections of sonnets which bore witness to the un- 
exampled vogue of the Elizabethan sonnet between 1591 and 1597. 



88 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

Men and women of the cultivated Elizabethan nobility 
encouraged poets to celebrate in single sonnets their 
virtues and graces, and under the same patronage 
there were produced multitudes of sonnet-sequences 
which more or less fancifully narrated, after the 
manner of Petrarch and his successors, the pleasures 
and pains of love. Between 1591 and 1597 no 
aspirant to poetic fame in the country failed to seek^ 
a patron's ears by a trial of skill on the popular 
poetic instrument, and Shakespeare, who habitually 
kept abreast of the currents of contemporary literary 
taste, applied himself to sonnetteering with all the 
force of his poetic genius when the fashion was at its 
height. 

Shakespeare had lightly experimented with the 
sonnet from the outset of his literary career. Three 
Shake- well-turned examples figure in ' Love's 
firsfexpe- Labour's Lost,' probably his earliest play ; 
nments. ^^^ q£ ^-^q choruses in ' Romeo and Juliet' 
are couched in the sonnet form ; and a letter of the 
heroine Helen, in * All's Well that Ends Well,' which 
bears traces of very early composition, takes the 
same shape. It has, too, been argued ingeniously, if 
not convincingly, that he was author of the some- 
what clumsy sonnet, ' Phaeton to his friend Florio,* 
which prefaced in 1591 Florio's * Second Frutes,' a 
series of Lcalian- English dialogues for students.^ 

1 Minto, Characte7'istics of English Poetry, 1885, pp. 371, 382, 
The sonnet, headed ' Phaeton to his friend Florio,' runs : 

Sweet friend whose name agrees with thy increase, 

How fit a rival art thou of the Spring ! 

For when each branch hath left his flourishing, 
And green-locked Summer's shady pleasures cease; 



THE SONNETS AND THEIR LITERARY HISTORY 89, 

But these were sporadic efforts. It was not till 
the spring of 1593, after Shakespeare had secured 
a nobleman's patronage for his earliest publication, 
' Venus and Adonis,' that he became a sonnetteer 
on an extended scale. Of the hundred and fifty-four 
sonnets that survive outside his plays, the greater 
Majority number were in all likelihood composed 
speare's^' between that date and the autumn of 1 594, 
com"^osed during his thirtieth and thirty- first years, 
in 1594. His occasional reference in the sonnets to his 
growing age was a conventional device — traceable to 
Petrarch — of all sonnetteer s of the day, and admits of 

She makes the Winter's storms repose in peace, 
And spends her franchise on each living thing : 
The daisies sprout, the little birds do sing, 
Herbs, gums, and plants do vaunt of their release. 

So when that all our English Wits lay dead, 
(Except the laurel that is ever green) 
Thou with thy Fruit our barrenness o'erspread, 
And set thy flowery pleasance to be seen. 

Such fruits, such flow'rets of morality. 
Were ne'er before brought out of Italy. 

Cf. Shakespeare's Sonnet xcviii beginning : , 

When proud-pied April, dress'd in all his trim, 
Hath put a spirit of youth in everything. 

But like descriptions of Spring and Summer formed a topic that 
was common to all the sonnets of the period. Much has been written 
of Shakespeare's alleged acquaintance with Florio. Farmer and 
Warburton argue that Shakespeare ridiculed Florio in Flolofernes in 
Love's Labour's Lost. They chiefly rely on Florio's bombastic prefaces 
to his Worlde of Wordes and his translation of Montaigne's Essays 
(1603). There is nothing there to justify the suggestion. Florio 
writes more in the vein of Arlnado than of Holofernes, and, beyond 
the fact that he was a teacher of languages to noblemen, he bears no 
resemblance to Holofernes, a village schoolmaster. Shakespeare 
doubtless knew Florio as Southampton's protege, and read his fine 
translation of Montaigne's Essays with delight. He quotes from it 
in The Tempest: see p. 262. 



90 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

no literal interpretation.^ In matter and in manner 
the bulk of the poems suggest that they came from 
the pen of a man not much more than thirty. Doubt- 
less he renewed his sonnetteering efforts occasionally 

1 Shakespeare writes in his Sonnets : 

My glass shall not persuade me I am old ("xxii. i). 

But when my glass shows me myself iadeed, 

Seated and chopp'd with tann'd antiquity (Ixii. 9-10). 

That time of year thou mayst in me behold 

When yellow leaves, or none, or few do hang (Ixxiii. 1—2). 

My days are past the best (cxxxviii. 6) . 

Daniel in Delia (xxiii) in 1591, when twenty-nine years old, 
exclaimed : 

My years draw on my everlasting night, 

... My days are done. 

Richard Barnfield, at the age of twenty, bade the boy Ganymede, to 
whom he addressed his Affectionate Shepherd and a sequence of sonnets 
in 1594 (ed. Arber, p. 23) : 

Behold my gray head, full of silver hairs, 
My wrinkled skin, deep furrows in my face. 

Similarly Drayton in a sonnet {Idea, xiv) published in 1594, when he 
was barely thirty-one, wrote: 

Looking into the glass of my youth's miseries, 

I see the ugly face of my deformed cares 

With withered brows all wrinkled with despairs; 

and a little later (No. xliii of the 1599 edition) he repeated how 

.Age rules my lines with wrinkles in my face. 

All these lines are echoes of Petrarch, and Shakespeare and Drayton 
followed the Italian master's words more closely than their contempora- 
ries. Cf. Petrarch's Sonnet cxliii. (to Laura alive), or Sonnet Ixxxi (to 
Laura after death) ; the latter begins : 

Dicemi spesso il mio fidato speglio, 

L'animo stanco e la cangiata scorza 

E la scemata mia destrezza e forza: 
Non ti nasconder piu : tu se' pur veglio. 

(z.(?. ' My faithful glass, my weary spirit and my wrinkled skin, and my 
decaying wit and strength repeatedly tell me : " It cannot longer be 
hidden from you, you are old." ') 



THE SONNETS AND THEIR LITERARY HISTORY 9 1 

and at irregular intervals during the nine years which 
elapsed between 1594 and the accession of James I 
in 1603. But to very few of the extant examples can 
a date later than 1594 be allotted with confidence. 
Sonnet cvii, in which plain reference is made to 
Queen Elizabeth's death, may be fairly regarded as a 
belated and a final act of homage on Shakespeare's 
part to the importunate vogue of the Elizabethan 
sonnet. All the evidence, whether internal or ex- 
ternal, points to the conclusion that the sonnet ex- 
hausted such fascination as it exerted on Shakespeare 
before his dramatic genius attained its full height. 

In literary value Shakespeare's sonnets are notably 

unequal. Many reach levels of lyric melody and medi- 

tative energy that are hardly to be matched 

literary elscwhcre in poetry. The best examples 

value. r J r 

are charged with the mellowed sweetness 
of rhythm and metre, the depth of thought and feel- 
ing, the vividness of imagery and the stimulating fer- 
vour of expression which arfe the finest fruits of poetic 
power. On the other hand, many sink almost into 
inanity beneath the burden of quibbles and conceits. 
In both their excellences and their defects Shake- 
speare's sonnets betray near kinship to his early 
dramatic work, in which passages of the highest 
poetic temper at times alternate with unimpressive 
displays of verbal jugglery. In phraseology the 
sonnets often closely resemble such early dramatic 
efforts as * Love's Labour's Lost ' and ' Romeo and 
Juliet.' There is far more concentration in the sonnets 
than in 'Venus and Adonis ' or in * Lucrece,' although 



92 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

occasional utterances of Shakespeare's Roman heroine 
show traces of the intensity that characterises the 
best of them. The superior and more evenly sus- 
tained energy of the sonnets is to be attributed, not to 
the accession of power that comes with increase of 
years, but to the innate principles of the poetic form, 
and to metrical exigencies, which impelled the sonnet- 
teer to aim at a uniform condensation of thought and 
language. 

In accordance with a custom that was not un- 
,^. , . common, Shakespeare did not publish his 

Circulation ' ^ ^ ^ 

in manu- sonucts ; he circulated them in manuscript.^ 

script. , . . , T , . 

But their reputation grew, and public in- 
terest was aroused in them in spite of his unreadi- 

1 The Sonnets of Sidney, Watson, Daniel, and Constable long cir- 
culated in manuscript, and suffered much the same fate as Shakespeare's 
at the hands of piratical publishers. After circulating many years in 
manuscript, Sidney's Sonnets were published in 1591 by an irresponsible 
trader, Thomas Newman, who in his self-advertising dedication wrote of 
the collection that it had been widely ' spread abroad in written copies,' 
and had 'gathered much corruption by ill writers' \_i.e. copyists]. 
Constable produced in 1592 a collection of twenty sonnets in a volume 
which he entitled 'Diana.' This was an authorised publication. But 
in 1594 a printer and a publisher, without Constable's knowledge or 
sanction, reprinted these sonnets and scattered them through a volume 
of nearly eighty miscellaneous sonnets by Sidney and many other hands; 
the adventurous publishers bestowed on their medley the title of Diana,' 
which Constable had distinctively attached to his own collection. Daniel 
suffered in much the same way. See Appendix IX for further notes on 
the subject. Proofs of the commonness of the habit of circulating litera- 
ture in manuscript abound. Fulke Greville, writing to Sidney's father-in- 
law. Sir Francis Walsingham, in 1587, expressed regret that uncorrected 
manuscript copies of the then unprinted Arcadia were ' so common.' 
In 1 591 Gabriel Cawood, the publisher of Robert Southwell's Mary 
Magdalen^ s Funeral Tears, wrote that manuscript copies of the work 
had long flown about ' fast and false.' Nash, in the preface to his 



THE SONNETS AND THEIR LITERARY HISTORY 93 

ness to give them publicity. A line from one of 
them : 

Lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds (xciv. 14) ,1 

was quoted in the play of 'Edward III,' which was 
probably written before 1595. Meres, writing in 1598, 
enthusiastically commends Shakespeare's * sugred ^ 
sonnets among his private friends,' and mentions them 
in close conjunction with his two narrative poems. 
William Jaggard piratically inserted in 1599 two of 
the most mature of the series (Nos. cxxxviii and 
cxliv) in his ' Passionate Pilgrim.' 

At length, in 1609, the sonnets were surreptitiously 
sent to press. Thomas Thorpe, the moving spirit in 
Their the design of their publication, was a camp- 

pubiication fo^ower of the regular publishing army, 
in 1609. He was professionally engaged in pro- 
curing for publication literary works which had been 
widely disseminated in written copies, and had thus 
passed beyond their authors' control ; for the law then 
recognised no natural right in an author to the crea- 
tions of his brain, and the full owner of a manuscript 
copy of any literary composition was entitled to 
reproduce it, or to treat it as he pleased, without 

Terrors of the Night, 1594, described how a copy of that essay, which 
a friend had ' wrested ' from him, had 'progressed [without his authority] 
from one scrivener's shop to another, and at length grew so common 
that it was ready to be hung out for one of their figures \i.e. shop-signs], 
like a pair of indentures.' . 

^ Cf. Sonnet Ixix. 1 2 : 

To thy fair flower add the rank smell of weeds. 

2 For other instances of the application of this epithet to Shake- 
speare's work, see p. 185, note i. 



94 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

reference to the author's wishes. Thorpe's career as 
a procurer of neglected ' copy ' had begun well. He 
made, in 1600, his earliest hit by bringing to light 
Marlowe's translation of the ' First Book of Lucan.' 
On May 20, 1609, ^^ obtained a license for the publi- 
cation of 'Shakespeares Sonnets,' and this tradesman- 
like form of title figured not only on the * Stationers' 
Company's Registers,' but on the title-page. Thorpe 
employed George Eld to print the manuscript, and 
two booksellers, William Aspley and John Wright, 
to distribute it to the public. On half the edition 
Aspley's name figured as that of the seller, and on the 
other half that of Wright. The book was issued in 
June,^ and the owner of the 'copy ' left the public under 
no misapprehension as to his share in the production 
by printing above his initials a dedicatory preface 
from his own pen. The appearance in a book 
of a dedication from the publisher's (instead of 
from the author's) pen was, unless the substitution 
was specifically accounted for on other grounds, an 
accepted sign that the author had no hand in the pub- 
lication. Except in the case of his two narrative 
poems, which were published in 1593 and 1594 respec- 
tively, Shakespeare made no effort to publish any of 
his works, and uncomplainingly submitted to the 
wholesale piracies of his plays and the ascription to 
him of books by other hands. Such practices were 
encouraged by his passive indifference and the con- 
temporary condition of the law of copyright. He 

1 The actor Alleyn paid fivepence for a copy in that month 
(of. Warner's Dulwich MSS. p. 92). 



THE SONNETS AND THEIR LITERARY HISTORY 95 

cannot be credited with any responsibility for the 
pubHcation of Thorpe's collection of his sonnets in 
1609. With characteristic insolence Thorpe took the 
added liberty of appending a previously unprinted 
poem of forty-nine seven-line stanzas (the metre of 
•A Lover's * Lucrccc ') entitled * A Lover's Complaint,' 
Complaint. ^^ which a girl laments her betrayal by a 
deceitful youth. The poem, in a gentle Spenserian 
vein, has no connection with the ' Sonnets.' If, as is 
possible, it be by Shakespeare, it must have been 
written in very early days. 

A misunderstanding respecting Thorpe's preface 
and his part in the publication has led many critics 
into a serious misinterpretation of Shakespeare's 
poems.^ Thorpe's dedication was couched in the 
bombastic language which was habitual to him. 
Thomas He advertised Shakespeare as * our ever- 
and'^r hving poct.' As the chief promoter of 
w. H." the undertaking, he called himself ' the 
well-wishing adventurer in setting forth,' and in reso- 
nant phrase designated as the patron of the venture 

1 The chief editions of the sonnets that have appeared, v^^ith critical 
apparatus, of late years are those of Mr. Gerald Massey (1872, reissued 
1888), Professor Dowden (1875, reissued 1896), Mr. Thomas Tyler 
(1890), Mr. George Wyndham, M.P. (1898), Samuel Butler (1899), 
and Canon Beeching (1904). The last two editors argue that the 
sonnets w^ere addressed to an unknow^n youth of no high birth, w^ho was 
the private friend, and not the patron, of the poet. I regret to find 
myself in more or less complete disagreement with all these writers, 
although I am at one vi^ith Mr. Massey in identifying the young man to 
whom many of the sonnets were addressed with the Earl of South- 
ampton. For the chief works advocating the theory that the sonnets 
were addressed to William, third Earl of Pembroke, see Appendix vi, 
*Mr. Willjaro Herbert/ no^e i. 



96 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

a partner in the speculation, ' Mr. W. H.' In the 
conventional dedicatory formula of the day he wished 
'Mr. W. H.' 'all happiness' and 'eternity,' such 
eternity as Shakespeare in the text of the sonnets 
conventionally foretold for his own verse. When 
Thorpe was organising the issue of Marlowe's ' First 
Book of Lucan ' in 1600, he sought the patronage of 
Edward Blount, a friend in the trade. 'W. H.' was 
doubtless in a like position. He is best identified with 
a stationer's assistant, William Hall, who was profes- 
sionally engaged, like Thorpe, in procuring 'copy.' In 
1606 ' W. H.' won a conspicuous success in that direc- 
tion, and conducted his operations under cover of the 
familiar initials. In that year ' W. H.' announced that 
he had procured a neglected manuscript poem — *A 
Foure-fould Meditation ' — by the Jesuit Robert South- 
well who had been executed in 1595, and he published 
it with a dedication (signed ' W. H.') vaunting his good 
fortune in meeting with such treasure-trove. When 
Thorpe dubbed ' Mr. W. H.,' with characteristic magni- 
loquence, ' the onlie begetter [^i.e. obtainer or procurer] 
of these ensuing sonnets,' he merely indicated that 
that personage was the first of the pirate-publisher 
fraternity to procure a manuscript of Shakespeare's 
sonnets and recommend its surreptitious issue. In 
accordance with custom, Thorpe gave Hall's initials 
only, because he was an intimate associate who 
was known by those initials to their common circle 
of friends. Hall was not a man of sufficiently 
wide public reputation to render it probable that the 



THE SONNETS AND THEIR LITERARY HISTORY 97 

printing of his full name would excite additional 
interest in the book or attract buyers. 

The common assumption that Thorpe in this boast- 
ful preface was covertly addressing, under the initials 
* Mr. W. H.,' a young nobleman, to whom the sonnets 
were originally addressed by Shakespeare, ignores the 
elementary principles of publishing transactions of the 
day, and especially of those of the type to which Thorpe's 
efforts were confined. ■"• There was nothing mysterious 
or fantastic, although from a modern point of view 
there was much that lacked principle, in Thorpe's 
methods of business. His choice of patron for this, 
like all his volumes, was dictated solely by his 
mercantile interests. He was under no inducement 
and in no position to take into consideration the 
affairs of Shakespeare's private life. Shakespeare, 
through all but the earliest stages of his career, 
belonged socially to a world that was cut off by im- 

1 It has been wrongly inferred that Shakespeare asserts in Sonnets 
cxxxv-vi and cxliii that the young friend to whom he addressed some 
of the sonnets bore his own Christian name of Will (see for a full examina- 
tion of these sonnets Appendix viii). Further, it has been fantastically 
suggested that the line (xx. 7) describing the youth as * A man in hue, all 
hues in his controlling' (^i.e. a man in colour or complexion whose 
charms are so varied as to appear to give his countenance control of, or 
enable it to assume, all manner of fascinating hues or complexions), and 
other applications to the youth of the ordinary word ' hue,' imply that 
his surname was Hughes. There is no other pretence of argument for 
the conclusion, which a few critics have hazarded in all seriousness, that 
the friend's name was William Hughes. No known contemporary of 
that name, either in age or position in life, bears any resemblance to the 
young man who is addressed by Shakespeare in his Sonnets (cf. Notes 
and Queries, 5th ser. v. 443). 
H 



98 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

passable barriers from that in which Thorpe pursued 
his caUing. It was wholly outside Thorpe's aims in 
life to seek to mystify his customers by investing a 
dedication with any cryptic significance. 

No peer of the day, moreover, bore a name which 
could be represented by the initials ' Mr. W. H.' 
Shakespeare was never on terms of intimacy (although 
the contrary has often been recklessly assumed) with 
William, third Earl of Pembroke, when a youth. ^ 
But were complete proofs of the acquaintanceship 
forthcoming, they would throw no light on Thorpe's 
' Mr. W. H.' The Earl of Pembroke was, from his birth 
to the date of his succession to the earldom in 1601, 
known by the courtesy title of Lord Herbert and by no 
other name, and he could not have been designated at 
any period of his life by the symbols 'Mr. W. H.' In 
1609 Pembroke was a high officer of state, and 
numerous books were dedicated to him in all the 
splendour of his many titles. Star-Chamber penalties 
would have been exacted of any publisher or author 
who denied him in print his titular distinctions. 
Thorpe had occasion to dedicate two books to the 
Earl in later years, and he there showed not merely 
that he was fully acquainted with the compulsory 
etiquette, but that his sycophantic temperament ren- 
dered him only eager to improve on the conventional 
formulas of servility. . Any further consideration of 
Thorpe's address to * Mr. W. H.' belongs to the 



1 See Appendix vi, * Mr. William Herbert'; and vii, * Shake- 
speare and the Earl of Pembroke.' 



THE SONNETS AND THEIR LITERARY HISTORY 99 

biographies of Tiiorpe and his friend ; it lies outside 
the scope of Shakespeare's biography.^ 

Shakespeare's 'Sonnets' ignore the somewhat 
complex scheme of rhyme adopted by Petrarch, 
The form whom the Elizabethan sonnetteers, like the 
speSe's^" French sonnetteers of the sixteenth century, 
Sonnets. recogniscd to be in most respects their master. 
Following the example originally set by Surrey and 
Wyatt, and generally pursued by Shakespeare's con- 
temporaries, his sonnets aim at far greater metrical 
simplicity than the Italian or the French. They 
consist of three decasyllabic quatrains with a con- 
cluding couplet, and the quatrains rhyme alternately.^ 

1 The full results of my researches into Thorpe's history, his methods 
of business, and the significance of his dedicatory addresses, of which 
four are extant besides that prefixed to the volume of Shakespeare's 
Sonnets in 1609, are given in Appendix v, 'The True History of 
Thomas Thorpe and " Mr. W. H." ' 

2 The form of fourteen-line stanza adopted by Shakespeare is in no 
way peculiar to himself. It is the type recognised by Elizabethan writers 
on metre as correct and customary in England long before he wrote. 
George Gascoigne, in his Certayne Notes of Instruction concerning the 
makitig of Verse or Ryrne in English (published in Gascoigne's Posies, 
1575), defined sonnets thus: ' Fouretene lynes, every lyne conteyning 
tenne syllables. The first twelve to ryme in staves of foure lynes by 
cross metre and the last two ryming togither, do conclude the whole.' 
In twenty-one of the 108 sonnets of which Sidney's collection entitled 
Astrophel and Stella consists, the rhymes are on the foreign model and 
the final couplet is avoided. But these are exceptional. As is not 
uncommon in Elizabethan sonnet-collections, one of Shakespeare's 
sonnets (xcix) has fifteen lines; ■'another (cxxvi) has only twelve lines, 
and those in rhymed couplets (cf. Lodge's Phillis, Nos. viii and xxvi) ; 
and a third (cxlv) is in octosyllabics. But it is very doubtful whether 
the second and third of these sonnets rightly belong to Shakespeare's 
collection. They were probably written as independent lyrics: see 
p. 100, note I. 



100 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

A single sonnet does not always form an indepen- 
dent poem. As in the French and Italian sonnets 
of the period, and in those of Spenser, Sidney, Daniel, 
and Drayton, the same train of thought is at times 
pursued continuously through two or more. The 
collection of Shakespeare's 154 sonnets thus presents 
the appearance of an extended series of independent 
poems, many in a varying number of fourteen-line 
stanzas. The longest sequence (i-xvii) numbers 
seventeen sonnets, and in Thorpe's edition opens the 
volume. 

It is unlikely that the order in which the poems 
were printed follows the order in which they were 
Want of written. Fantastic endeavours have been 
continuity. Yn3.dQ to detect in the original arrangement 
of the poems a closely connected narrative, but the 
thread is on any showing constantly interrupted.^ 
The two It is usual to divide the sonnets into two 
'groups.' groups, and to represent that all those 
numbered i-cxxvi by Thorpe were addressed to a 
young man, and all those numbered cxxvii-cliv were 

1 If the critical ingenuity which has detected a continuous thread of 
narrative in the order that Thorpe printed Shakespeare's sonnets were 
applied to the booksellers' miscellany of sonnets called Diana (1594), 
that volume, which rakes together sonnets on all kinds of amorous 
subjects from all quarters and numbers them consecutively^ could be 
made to reveal the sequence of an individual lover's moods quite as 
readily, and, if no external evidence were admitted, quite as convin- 
cingly, as Thorpe's collection of Shakespeare's sonnets. Almost all 
Elizabethan sonnets are not merely in the like metre, but are pitched 
in what sounds superficially to be the same key of pleading or yearning. 
Thus almost every collection gives at a first perusal a specious and 
delusive impression of homogeneity. 



THE SONNETS AND THEIR LITERARY HISTORY 10 1 

addressed to a woman. This division cannot be 
literally justified. In the first group some eighty of 
the sonnets can be proved to be addressed to a man 
by the use of the masculine pronoun or some other 
unequivocal sign ; but among the remaining forty 
there is no clear indication of the kind. Many of 
these forty are meditative soliloquies which address no 
person at all (cf. cv, cxvi, cxix, cxxi). A few in- 
voke abstractions like Death (Ixvi,) or Time (cxxiii), 
or * benefit of ill' (cxix). The twelve-lined poem 
(cxxvi), the last of the first * group,' does little more 
than sound a variation on the conventional poetic in- 
vocations of Cupid or Love personified as a boy.^ And 
there is no valid objection to the assumption that the 
poet inscribed the rest of these forty sonnets to a 
woman (cf. xxi, xlvi, xlvii). Similarly, the sonnets in 
the second * group ' (cxxvii-cliv) have no uniform 
superscription. Six invoke no person at all. No. 
cxxviii is an overstrained compliment on a lady play- 
ing on the virginals. No. cxxix is a metaphysical 
disquisition on lust. No. cxlv is a playful lyric in 

1 Shakespeare merely warns his * lovely boy ' that, though he be 
now the * minion ' of Nature's * pleasure,' he will not succeed in defying 
Time's inexorable law. Sidney addresses in a lighter vein Cupid — 
'blind hitting boy,' he calls him — in his Astrophel (No. xlvi). Cupid 
is similarly invoked in three of Drayton's sonnets (No. xxvi in the 
edition of 1594, and Nos. xxxiii and xxxiv in that of 1605), and 
in six in Fulke Greville's collection entitled Ccelica (cf. Ixxxiv, 
beginning * Farewell, sweet boy; complain not of my truth'). Lyly, 
in his Sapho and Phao, 1584, and in his Mother Bonibie, 1598, has 
songs of like temper addressed in the one case to ' O Cruel love ! ' and 
in the other to ' O Cupid ! monarch over kings.' A similar theme to 
that of Shakespeare's Sonnet cxxvi is treated by John Ford in the 
song, ' Love is ever dying,' in his tragedy of the Broken Hearty "^^ZZ' 



I02 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

octosyllabics, like Lyly's song of ' Cupid and Campaspe,' 
and its tone has close afifinity to that and other of 
Lyly's songs. No. cxlvi invokes the soul of man. 
Nos. cliii and cliv soliloquise on an ancient Greek 
apologue on the force of Cupid's fire.^ 

The choice and succession of topics in each 
* group' give to neither genuine cohesion. In the 
first ' group ' the long opening sequence (i-xvii) 
forms the poet's appeal to a young man to marry 
so that his youth and beauty may survive in children. 
There is almost a contradiction in terms between 
the poet's handling of that topic and his emphatic 
boast in the two following sonnets (xviii-xix) that 
his verse alone is fully equal to the task of immor- 
Main talising his friend's youth and accomplish- 

the first^ ments. The same asseveration is repeated 
'group.' jj^ many later sonnets (cf. Iv, Ix, Ixiii, 
Ixxiv, Ixxxi, ci, cvii). These alternate with conven- 
tional adulation of the beauty of the object of the 
poet's affections (cf. xxi, liii, Ixviii) and descriptions 
of the effects of absence in intensifying devotion (cf. 
xlviii, 1, cxiii). There are many reflections on the 
nocturnal torments of a lover (cf. xxvii, xxviii, 
xHii, Ixi) and on his blindness to the beauty of 
spring or summer when he is separated from his love 
(cf. xcvii, xcviii). At times a youth is rebuked for 
sensual indulgences ; he has sought and won the 
favour of the poet's mistress in the poet's absence, 
but the poet is forgiving (xxxii-xxxv, xl-xlii, Ixix, 
xcv-xcvi). In Sonnet Ixx the young man whom 

1 See p. 117, note 2. 



THE SONNETS AND THEIR LITERARY HISTORY 103 

the poet addresses is credited with a different disposi- 
tion and experience : 

And thou present'st a pure unstained prime. 
Thou hast pass'd by the ambush of young days, 
Either not assail'd, or victor being charg'd ! 

At times melancholy overwhelms the writer : he 
despairs of the corruptions of the age (Ixvi), re- 
proaches himself with carnal sin (cxix), declares him- 
self weary of his profession of acting (cxi, cxii), and 
foretells his approaching death (Ixxi-lxxiv). Through- 
out are dispersed obsequious addresses to the youth in 
his capacity of sole patron of the poet's verse (cf. xxiii, 
xxxvii, c, ci, ciii, civ). But in one sequence the friend 
is sorrowfully reproved for bestowing his patronage 
on rival poets (Ixxviii-lxxxvi). In three sonnets 
near the close of the first group in the original edition, 
the writer gives varied assurances of his constancy in 
love or friendship which apply indifferently to man or 
woman (cf. cxxii, cxxiv, cxxv). 

In two sonnets of the second 'group' (cxxvi- 
clii) the poet compliments his mistress on her black 
complexion and raven-black hair and eyes. In twelve 
sonnets he hotly denounces his 'dark' mistress for 
her proud disdain of his affection, and for her mani- 
fold infidelities with other men. Apparently con- 
Main tinning a theme of the first 'group,' the poet 
thrsec°ond rebukes the woman, whom he addresses, for 
's^°^P- having beguiled his friend to yield himself to 
her seductions (cxxxiii-cxxxvi). Elsewhere he makes 
satiric reflections on the extravagant compHments 
paid to the fair sex by other sonnetteers (No. cxxx), 



104 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

or lightly quibbles on his name of ' Will ' (cxxx-vi). 
In tone and subject-matter numerous sonnets in the 
second as in the first * group ' lack visible sign of 
coherence with those they immediately precede or 
follow. 

It is not merely a close study of the text that 
confutes the theory, for which recent writers have 
fought hard, of a logical continuity in Thorpe's 
arrangement of the poems in 1609. There remains 
the historic fact that readers and publishers-of the 
seventeenth century acknowledged no sort of signifi- 
cance in the order in which the poems first saw the 
light. When the sonnets were printed for a second 
time in 1640 — thirty-one years after their first 
appearance — they were presented in a completely 
different order. The short descriptive titles which 
were then supplied to single sonnets or to short 
sequences proved that the collection was regarded as 
a disconnected series of occasional poems in more 
or less amorous vein. 

In whatever order Shakespeare's sonnets be 
studied, the claim that has been advanced in their 
Lack of behalf to rank as autobiographical docu- 

genuine , , , , .., 

sentiment mcuts Can Only be accepted with many 
blthan^' qualifications. Elizabethan sonnets were 
sonnets. commoiily the artificial products of the poet's 
fancy. A strain of personal emotion is occasionally 
discernible in a detached effort, and is vaguely trace- 
able in a few sequences ; but autobiographical con- 
fessions were very rarely the stuff of which the 
Elizabethan sonnet was made. The typical collection 



THE SONNETS AND THEIR LITERARY HISTORY 105 

of Elizabethan sonnets was a mosaic of plagiarisms, a 
medley of imitative studies. Echoes of the French 
or of the Italian sonnetteers, with their Platonic 
idealism, are usually the dominant notes. The echoes 
often have a musical quality peculiar to themselves. 
Daniel's fine sonnet (xlix) on * Care-charmer, sleep,' 
although directly inspired by the French, breathes a 
finer melody than the sonnet of Pierre de Brach ^ 
. apostrophising * le sommeil chasse-soin ' 

pendence (in the collection entitled * Les Amours 

on French / >\ 1 r t-«i m- 

and Italian d Aymec ), or the sonnet of Philippe 
mo e s. Desportes invoking ' Sommeil, paisible fils 
de la nuit solitaire * (in the collection entitled 
* Amours d'Hippolyte '). But, throughout Eliza- 
bethan sonnet literature, the heavy debt to Italian and 
French effort is unmistakable.^ Spenser, in 1569, at 
the outset of his literary career, avowedly translated 
numerous sonnets from Du Bellay and from Petrarch, 
and his friend Gabriel Harvey bestowed on him the 
title of ' an English Petrarch ' — the highest praise that 
the critic conceived it possible to bestow on an English 
sonnetteer.^ Thomas Watson in 1582, in his collec- 

1 1 547-1 604. Cf. De Brach, (Euvres Poetiques, edited by Reinhold 
Dezeimeris, 1861, i. pp. 59-60. 

2 See Appendices ix. and X. Of the vastness of the debt that the 
Elizabethan sonnet owed to foreign poets, a fuller estimate is given by 
the present writer in his preface to Elizabethan Sonnets (2 vols. 1 904), 
in the revised edition of Arber's English Garner. 

3 Gabriel Harvey, in his Pierces Supererogation (1593, p. 61), after 
enthusiastic commendation of Petrarch's sonnets (' Petrarch's invention 
is pure love itself; Petrarch's elocution pure beauty itself), justifies the 
common English practice of imitating them on the ground that * all the 
noblest Italian, French, and Spanish poets have in their several veins 



I06 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

tion of metrically irregular sonnets which he entitled 
''EKATOMn A0I A, or A Passionate Century of Love,' 
prefaced each poem, which he termed a ' passion,' with 
a prose note of its origin and intention. Watson frankly 
informed his readers that one ' passion ' was ' wholly 
translated out of Petrarch ' ; that in another passion 
' he did very busily imitate and augment a certain ode 
of Ronsard ' ; while ' the sense or matter of " a third " 
was taken out of Serafino in his *' Strambotti." ' In 
every case Watson gave the exact reference to his 

Petrarchised; and it is no dishonour for the daintiest or divinest Muse 
to be his scholar, whom the amiablest invention and beautifullest 
elocution acknowledge their master.' Both French and English son- 
netteers habitually admit that they are open to the charge of plagiarising 
Petrarch's sonnets to Laura (cf. Du Bellay's Les A?nours, ed. Becq 
de Fouquieres, 1876, p. 186, and Daniel's Delia, Sonnet xxxviii). 
The dependent relations in which both English and French sonnetteers 
stood to Petrarch may be best realised by comparing such a popular 
sonnet of the Italian master as No. ciii (or in some editions Ixxxviii) in 
Sonetti in Vita di M. Laura, beginning ' S ' amor non e, che dunque 
e quel ch' i' sento?' with a rendering of it into French like that of 
De Ba'if in his Amours de Francirie (ed. Becq de Fouquieres, p. 1 21), 
beginning, 'Si ce n'est pas Amour, que sent donques mon coeur?' or 
with a rendering of the same sonnet into English like that by Watson in 
his Passionate Century, No. v, beginning, * If 't bee not love I feele, 
what is it then?' Imitation of Petrarch is a constant characteristic 
of the English sonnet throughout the sixteenth century from the date of 
the earliest efforts of Surrey and Wyatt. It is interesting to compare 
the skill of the early and late sonnetteers in rendering the Italian master. 
Petrarch's sonnet In vita di M. Laura (No. Ixxx or Ixxxi, beginning 
* Cesare, poi che '1 traditor d' Egitto ') was independently translated 
both by Sir Thomas Wyatt, about 1530 (ed. Bell, p. 60), and by 
Francis Davison in his Poetical Rhapsody (1602, ed. Bullen, i. 90). 
Petrarch's sonnet (No. xcv or cxiii) was also rendered indepen- 
dently both by Wyatt (cf. Puttenham's Arte of English Poesie, ed. 
Arber, p. 231) and by Drummond of Hawthornden (ed. Ward, i. 100, 
221). 



THE SONNETS AND THEIR LITERARY HISTORY lO/ 

foreign original, and frequently appended a quotation. ^ 
Drayton in 1594, in the dedicatory sonnet of his collec- 
tion of sonnets entitled ' Idea,' declared that it was 'a 
fault too common in this latter time' 'to filch from 
Desportes or from Petrarch's pen.'^ Lodge did not 
acknowledge his literal borrowings from Ronsard and 
Ariosto, but he made a plain profession of indebted- 
ness to Desportes when he wrote : * Few men are able 
to second the sweet conceits of Phihppe Desportes, 
whose poetical writings are ordinarily in everybody's 
hand.' ^ Dr. Giles Fletcher, who in his collection of 
sonnets called * Licia ' (1593) simulated the varying 

^ Eight of Watson's sonnets are, according to his own account, render- 
ings from Petrarch; twelve are from Serafino dell' Aquila ( 1 466-1 500) ; 
four each come from Strozza, an Italian poet, and from Ronsard; three 
from the Italian poet Agnolo Firenzuola (1493-1548); two each from 
the French poet, Etienne Forcadel, known as Forcatulus (i5i4?-i573), 
the Italian Girolamo Parabosco (y?. 1548), and yEneas Sylvius; while 
many are based on passages from such authors as (among the Greeks) 
Sophocles, Theocritus, Apollonius of Rhodes (author of the epic * Argo- 
nautica'); or (among the Latins) Virgil, Tibullus, Ovid, Horace, 
Propertius, Seneca, Pliny, Lucan, Martial, and Valerius Flaccus; 
or (among other modern Italians) Angelo Poliziano (1454-1494) and 
Baptista Mantuanus (1448-1516); or (among other modern French- 
men) Gervasius Sepinus of Saumur, writer of eclogues after the manner 
of Virgil and Mantuanus. 

2 No importance can be attached to Drayton's pretensions to greater 
originality than his neighbours. The very line in which he makes the 
claim (' I am no pick-purse of another's wit ') is a verbatim quotation 
from a sonnet of Sir Philip Sidney. 

^ Lodge's Margarite, p. 79. See Appendix ix for the text of 
Desportes's sonnet (^Diane, livre ii. No. iii) and Lodge's translation 
in Phillis. Lodge gave two other translations of the same sonnet of 
Desportes — in his romance of Rosalind (Hunterian Society's reprint, 
p. 74), and in his volume of poems called Scillaes Aletamorphosis 
(p. 44). Many sonnets in Lodge's Phillis are rendered with equal 
literalness from Ronsard, Ariosto, Paschale, and others. 



I08 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

moods of a lover under the sway of a great passion 
as successfully as most of his rivals, stated on his 
title-page that his poems were all written in * imitation 
of the best Latin poets and others.' Very many of 
the love-sonnets in the series of sixty-eight penned 
ten years later by William Drummond of Hawthorn- 
den have been traced to their sources- in the Italian 
sonnets not merely of Petrarch, but of the sixteenth- 
century poets Guarini, Bembo, Giovanni Battista 
Marino, Tasso, and Sannazzaro.^ The Elizabethans 
usually gave the fictitious mistresses after whom their 
volumes of sonnets were called the names that had 
recently served the like purpose in France. Daniel 
followed Maurice Seve^in christening his collection 
' Delia ' ; Constable followed Desportes in christen- 
ing his collection ' Diana ' ; while Drayton not only 
applied to his sonnets on his title-page in 1594 the 
French term * amours,' but bestowed on his ima- 
ginary heroine the title of Idea, which seems to have 
been the invention of Claude de Pontoux,^ although it 
was employed by other French contemporaries. 

With good reason Sir Philip Sidney warned the 
public that ' no inward touch' was to be expected 
from sonnetteers of his day, whom he describes as 

[Men] that do dictionary's method bring 
Into their rhymes running in rattling rows; 
[Men] that poor Petrarch's long deceased woes 
With newborn sighs and denizened wit do sing. 

1 See Drummond's Poems, ed. W. C. Ward, in Muses' Library, 
1894, i. 207 seq. 
-2 Seve's Delie was first published at Lyons in 1544. 
^ 1530-1579- 



THE SONNETS AND THEIR LITERARY HISTORY 1 09 

Sidney unconvincingly claimed greater sincerity for 
his own experiments. But ' even amorous sonnets in 
Sonnetteers' the gallantcst and sweetest civil vein,' wrote 
of inSn°^^ Gabriel Harvey in ' Pierces Supererogation ' 
cerity. [^1 1593, 'are but dainties of a pleasurable 
wit.' Drayton's sonnets more nearly approached 
Shakespeare's in quality than those of any contem- 
porary. Yet Drayton told the readers of his collec- 
tion entitled ' Idea ' ^ (after the French) that if any 
sought genuine passion in them, they had better go 
elsewhere. * In all humours sportively he ranged,' he 
declared. Dr. Giles Fletcher, in 1593, introduced his 
collection of imitative sonnets entitled * Licia, or 
Poems of Love,' with the warning, * Now in that I 
have written love sonnets, if any man measure my 
affection by my style, let him say I am in love. 
. . . Here, take this by the way ... -a man may 
write of love and not be in love, as well as of 

1 In two of his century of sonnets (Nos. xiii and xxiv in 1594 
edition, renumbered xxxii and liii in 1619 edition) Drayton hints 
that his 'fair Idea' embodied traits of an identifiable lady of his 
acquaintance, and he repeats the hint in two other short poems; but 
the fundamental principles of his sonnetteering exploits are defined 
explicitly in Sonnet xviii in 1594 edition. 

Some, when in rhyme, they of their loves do tell, . . . 
Only I call [i.e. I call only] on my divine Idea. 

Joachim du Bellay, one of the French poets who anticipated Drayton 
in addressing sonnets to ' L'Idee,' left the reader in no doubt of his 
intent by concluding one poem, thus: 

La, 6 mon ame, au plus hault ciel guidde, 
Tu y pourras recognoistre I'ldee 
De la beaute qu'en ce monde j'adore. 

(Du Bellay's Olive, No. cxiii, published in 1568.) 



no WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

husbandry and not go to the plough, or of witches 
and be none, or of hoHness and be profane.' ^ 

The dissemination of false sentiment by the 
sonnetteers, and their monotonous and mechanical 
Contempo- treatment of ' the pangs of despised love ' 
sureof^' or the joys of requited affection, did not 
teers'^faise ^scapc the ccnsurc of contemporary criti- 
sentiment. cism. The air soon rang with sarcastic 
protests from the most respected writers of the day. 
In early life Gabriel Harvey wittily parodied the 
mingling of adulation and vituperation in the con- 
ventional sonnet-sequence in his 'Amorous Odious 
Sonnet intituled The Student's Loove or Hatrid.'^ 
Chapman in 1595, in a series of sonnets entitled * A 
Coronet for his mistress Philosophy,' appealed to his 
literary comrades to abandon 'the painted cabinet' 
of the love-sonnet for a coffer of genuine worth. But 
the most resolute of the censors of the sonnetteering 
vogue was the poet and lawyer. Sir John Davies. In 
a sonnet addressed about 1596 to his friend, Sir 
Anthony Cooke (the patron of Drayton's * Idea '), he 
inveighed against the ' bastard sonnets ' which ' base 
rhymers ' * daily ' begot * to their own shames and 
'Gulling poetry's disgrace.' In his anxiety to stamp 
sonnets.' Q^|. ^^iQ folly he wrote and circulated in 
manuscript a specimen series of nine ' gulling sonnets ' 

^ Ben Jonson, repeating without acknowledgment an Italian critic's 
severe censure (cf. AtheiKBum, July 9, 1904), told Drummond of Haw- 
thornden that ' he cursed Petrarch for redacting verses to sonnets which 
he said were like that tyrant's bed, where some who were too short 
were racked, others too long cut short ' (Jonson's Conversation, p. 4). 

2 See p. 125 infra. 



THE SONNETS AND THEIR LITERARY HISTORY III 

or parodies of the conventional efforts.^ Even Shake- 
speare, does not seem to have escaped Davies's con- 
demnation. Sir John is especially severe on the 
sonnetteers who handled conceits based on legal 
technicalities, and his eighth 'gulling sonnet,' in 
which he ridicules the application of law terms to 
affairs of the heart, may well have been suggested 
by Shakespeare's legal phraseology in his Sonnets 
Ixxxvii and cxxiv ; ^ while Davies's Sonnet ix, 
beginning : 

To love, my lord, I do knight's service owe 

must have parodied Shakespeare's Sonnet xxvi., begin- 
ning : 

Lord of my love, to whom in vassalage, &c.-^ 

Echoes of the critical hostility are heard, it is curious 
to note, in nearly all the references that Shakespeare 
Shake- himself makes to sonnetteering in his plays. 
scornful ' Tush, nonc but minstrels like of sonnetting,' 
allusion to exclaims Biron in * Love's Labour's Lost' 

sonnets in 

his plays, (iv. iii. 158). In the 'Two Gentlemen of 
Verona ' (iii. ii. 68 seq.) there is a satiric touch in the 
recipe for the conventional love-sonnet which Proteus 
offers the amorous Duke : 

You must lay lime to tangle her desires 
By wailful sonnets whose composed rime 

1 They were first printed by Dr. Grosart for the Chetham Society 
in 1873 in his edition of 'the Dr'; Farmer MS.,' a sixteenth and seven- 
teenth century commonplace book preserved in the Chetham Library 
at Manchester, pt. i. pp. 76-81. Dr. Grosart also included the poems 
in his edition of Sir John Davies's Works, 1876, ii. 53-62. 

2 Davies's Sonnet viii is printed in Appendix IX. 
^ See p. 132 infra. 



112 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

Should be full fraught with serviceable vows . . . 

Say that upon the altar of her beauty 

You sacrifice your sighs, your tears, your heart. 

Mercutio treats Elizabethan sonnetteers even less 
respectfully when alluding to them in his flouts at 
Romeo : ' Now is he for the numbers that Petrarch 
flowed in : Laura, to his lady, was but a kitchen- 
wench. Marry, she had a better love to be-rhyme her.'i 
In later plays Shakespeare's disdain of the sonnet is 
still more pronounced. In ' Henry V ' (iii. vij. 33 et 
seq.) the Dauphin, after bestowing ridiculously mag- 
niloquent commendation on his charger, remarks, ' I 
once writ a sonnet in his praise, and begun thus : 
" Wonder of nature ! " ' The Duke of Orleans retorts : 
' I have heard a sonnet begin so to one's mistress.' 
The Dauphin replies: 'Then did they imitate that 
which I composed to my courser ; for my horse is my 
mistress.' In ' Much Ado about Nothing ' (v. ii. 4-7) 
Margaret, Hero's waiting-woman, mockingly asks 
Benedick to ' write her a sonnet in praise of her 
beauty.' Benedick jestingly promises one so * in high 
a style that no man living shall come over it.' Sub- 
sequently (v. iv. Sy) Benedick is convicted, to the 
amusement of his friends, of penning *a halting 
sonnet of his own pure brain ' in praise of Beatrice. 

"^ Romeo and Juliet, II. iv. 41-4. 



THE BORROWED CONCEITS OF THE SONNETS II3 



VIII 

THE BORROWED CONCEITS OF THE SONNETS 

At a first glance a far larger proportion of Shake- 
speare's sonnets give the reader the illusion of 
personal confessions than those of any contemporary; 
but when allowance has been made for the current 
conventions of EHzabethan sonnetteering, as well as 
for Shakespeare's unapproached affluence in dramatic 
Slender auto-instinct and invention — an affluence which 
ca?deSent enabled him to identify himself with every 
m Shake- p^ase of human emotion — the autobio2:raphic 

speare s ^ or 

sonnets. element in his sonnets, although it may not 
be dismissed altogether, is seen to shrink to slender 
proportions. As soon as the collection is studied 
comparatively with the many thousand sonnets that 
the printing presses of England, France, and Italy 
poured forth during the last years of the sixteenth 
century, a vast number of Shakespeare's performances 
prove to be little more than professional trials of 
r^^^ skill, often of superlative merit, to which 

imitative he deemed himself challenged by the efforts 

element. o j 

of contemporary practitioners. The thoughts 
and words of the sonnets of Daniel, Drayton, Watson, 
Barnabe Barnes, Constable, and Sidney were assimi- 
lated by Shakespeare in his poems as consciously and. 



114 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

with as little compunction as the plays and novels of 
contemporaries in his dramatic work. To Drayton he 
was especially indebted.^ Such resemblances as are 
visible between Shakespeare's sonnets and those of 
Petrarch or Desportes seem due to his study of 
the English imitators of those sonnetteers. Most of 

1 Mr. Fleay in his Biographical Chronicle of the English Stagey 
ii. 226 seq., gives a striking list of parallels between Shakespeare's and 
Drayton's sonnets, which any reader of the two collections in conjunc- 
tion could easily increase. Mr. Wyndham in his valuable edition of 
Shakespeare's Sonnets, p. 255, argues that Drayton was the plagiarist 
of Shakespeare, chiefly on bibliographical grounds, which he does not 
state quite accurately. One hundred sonnets belonging to Drayton's 
Idea series are extant, but they were not all published by him at 
one time. Fifty-three were alone included in his first and only separate 
edition of 1594; six more appeared in a reprint of /^(?a appended to 
the Heroical Epistles in 1599; twenty-four of these were gradually 
dropped and thirty-four new ones substituted in reissues appended 
to volumes of his writings issued respectively in 1600, 1602, 1603, 
and 1605. To the collection thus re-formed a further addition of 
twelve sonnets and a withdrawal of some twelve old sonnets were made 
in the final edition of Drayton's works in 1 619. There the sonnets 
number sixty-three. Mr. Wyndham insists that Drayton's latest pub- 
lished sonnets have alone an obvious resemblance to Shakespeare's 
sonnets, and that they all more or less reflect Shakespeare's sonnets as 
printed by Thorpe in 1609. But the whole of Drayton's century of sonnets 
except twelve were in print long before 1609, and it could easily be shown 
that the earliest fifty-three published in 1594 supply as close parallels 
with Shakespeare's sonnets as any of the forty-seven published sub- 
sequently. Internal evidence suggests that all but one or two of 
Drayton's sonnets were written by him in 1594, in* the full tide of 
the sonnetteering craze. Almost all were doubtless in circulation in 
manuscript then, although only fifty-three were published in 1 594. 
Shakespeare would have had ready means of access to Drayton's manu- 
script collection. Mr. Collier reprinted all the sonnets that Drayton 
published between 1594 and 1619 in his edition of Drayton's 
poems for the Roxburghe Club, 1856. Other editions of Drayton's 
sonnets of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries reprint exclusively 
the collection of sixty -three appended to the edition of his works in 1619. 



THE BORROWED CONCEITS OF THE SONNETS 1 15 

Ronsard's nine hundred sonnets and many of his nume- 
rous odes were accessible to Shakespeare in English 
adaptations, but there are a few signs that Shakespeare 
had recourse to Ronsard direct. 

Adapted or imitated conceits are scattered over 
the whole of Shakespeare's collection. They are 
usually manipulated with consummate skill, but 
Shakespeare's indebtedness is not thereby obscured. 
Shakespeare in many beautiful sonnets describes 
spring and summer, night and sleep and their influence 
on amorous emotion. Such topics are common 
themes of the poetry of the Renaissance, and they 
figure in Shakespeare's pages clad in the identical 
livery that clothed them in the sonnets of Petrarch, 
Ronsard, De Bai'f, and Desportes, or of English 
disciples of the Italian and French masters.^ In 

1 Almost all sixteenth-century sonnets on spring in the absence of 
the poet's love (cf. Shakespeare's Sonnets xcviii, xcix) are variations 
on the sentiment and phraseology of Petrarch's well-known Sonnet 
xlii, * In morte di M. Laura,' beginning : 

Zefiro torna e '1 bel tempo rimena, 

E i fiori e 1' erbe, sua dolce famiglia, 

E garrir Progne e pianger Filomena, 

E primavera Candida e vermiglia. 
Ridono i prati, e '1 ciel si rasserena; 

Giove s' allegra di mirar sua figlia; 

L' aria e 1' acqua e la terra e d' amor piena; 

Ogni animal d' amarsi riconsiglia. 
Ma per me, lasso, tornano i pii gravi 

Sospiri, che del cor profondo tragge, &c. 

See a translation by William Dru-mmond of Hawthornden in Sonnets, 
pt. ii. No. ix. Similar sonnets and odes on April, spring, and summer 
abound in French and English (cf. Becq de Fouquiere's CEuvres choisies 
de /.-A. de Ba'if, passim, and CEuvres choisies des Coniemporains de 
Ronsard, p. io8 (by Remy Belleau), p. 129 (by Amadis Jamyn) et 
passim). For descriptions of night and sleep see especially Ronsard's 



Il6 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

Sonnet xxiv Shakespeare develops Ronsard's conceit 
that his love's portrait is painted on his heart; and in 
Sonnet cxxii he repeats something of Ronsard's phra- 
seology in describing how his friend, who has just made 
him a gift of 'tables,' is 'character'd' in his brain. ^ Son- 
net xcix, which reproaches the flowers with stealing 
their charms from the features of his love, is adapted 
from Constable's sonnet to Diana (No. ix), and may be 
matched in other collections. Elsewhere Shakespeare 
meditates on the theory that man is an amalgam of the 
four elements, earth, water, air, and fire (xl-xlv).^ In 
all these he reproduces, with such embellishments as 
his genius dictated, phrases and sentiments of Daniel, 
Drayton, Barnes, and Watson, who imported them 
direct from France and Italy. In two or three instances 
Shakespeare showed his reader that he was engaged 
in a mere literary exercise by offering him alternative 
renderings of the same conventional conceit. In 
Sonnets xlvi and xlvii he paraphrases twice over — • 
appropriating many of Watson's words ^ the unexhila- 
rating notion that the eye and tieart are in perpetual 
dispute as to which has the greater influence on 

Amours (livre i. clxxxvi, livre ii. xxii; Odes, livre iv. No. iv, and 
his Odes Retranchees in CEtwres, edited by Blanchemain, ii. 392-4). 
Cf. Barnes's Parthenophe and Parthenophil, Ixxxiii, cv. 

1 Cf. Ronsard's Amours, livre i. clxxviii; Sonnets pour Asiree, 

vi. The latter opens : 

II ne falloit, maistresse, autres tablettes 
Pour vous graver que celles de mon ccEur 
Oil de sa main Amour, nostre vainqueur, 
Vous a grav^e et vos graces parfaites. 

2 Cf. Spenser, Iv ; Barnes's Parthenophe and Parthenophil, 
bcxvii; Fulke Greville's Ccelica, No. vii. 



THE BORROWED CONCEITS OF THE SONNETS il/ 

k)vers.^ In the concluding sonnets, cliii and cliv, he 
gives alternative versions of an apologue illustrating 
the potency of love which first figured in the Greek 
anthology, had been translated into Latin, and sub- 
sequently won the notice of English, French, and 
Italian sonnetteers.^ 

In the numerous sonnets in which Shakespeare 
Shake- boasted that his verse was so certain of im- 
ciaims of mortality that it was capable of immortal- 
taiity'for isiug the pcrson to whom it was addressed, 
abo^rrowed ^^ gave voice to no conviction that was 
conceit. pecuHar to his mental constitution, to no 
involuntary exaltation of spirit, or spontaneous 

1 A similar conceit is the topic of Shakespeare's Sonnet xxiv. 
Ronsard's Ode (livre iv. No. xx) consists of a like dialogue between 
the heart and the eye. The conceit is traceable to Petrarch, whose 
Sonnet Iv or Ixiii (' Occhi, piangete, accompagnate il core ') is a dialogue 
between the poet and his eyes, while his Sonnet xcix or cxvii is a com- 
panion dialogue between the poet and his heart. Cf. Watson's Tears 
of Fancie, xix, xx (a pair of sonnets on the theme which closely 
resemble Shakespeare's pair); Drayton's Idea, xxxiii; Barnes's 
Parthenophe and Parthenophil, xx, and Constable's Diana, vi. 7. 

2 The Greek epigram is in Palatine Anthology, ix. 627, and is 
translated into Latin in Selecta Epigrammata, Basel, 1529. The 
Greek lines relate, as in Shakespeare's sonnets, how a nymph who 
sought to quench Love's torch in a fountain only succeeded in heating 
the water. An added detail Shakespeare borrowed from a very recent 
adaptation of the epigram in Giles Fletcher's Licia, 1593 (Sonnet 
xxvii), where the poet's Love bathes in the fountain, with the result 
not only that 'she touched the water and it burnt with Love,' but also 

Now by her means jt purchased hath that bliss 
Which all diseases quickly can remove. 

Similarly Shakespeare in Sonnet cliv not merely states that the * cool 
well' into which Cupid's torch had fallen 'from Love's fire took heat 
perpetual,' but also that it grew * a bath and healthful remedy for men 
diseased.' . 1 



Il8 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

ebullition of feeling. He was merely proving that he 
could at will, and with superior effect, handle a theme 
that Ronsard and Desportes, emulating Pindar, 
Horace, Ovid, and other classical poets, had lately 
made a commonplace of the poetry of Europe.^ Sir 
Philip Sidney, in his * Apologie for Poetrie ' (1595), 
wrote that it was the common habit of poets ' to tell 
you that they will make you immortal by their verses.' ^ 
* Men of great calling,' Nash wrote in his ' Pierce 
Pennilesse,' 1593, *take it of merit to have their 
names eternised by poets.' ^ In the hands of Eliza- 
bethan sonnetteers the 'eternising' faculty of their 

1 In Greek poetry the topic is treated in Pindar's Olympic Odes, xi, 
and in a fragment by Sappho, No. i6 in Bergk's Foeice Lyrici GrcBci. 
In Latin poetry the topic is treated in Ennius as quoted in Cicero, 
De Senectute, c. 207; in Horace's Odes, iii. 30; in Virgil's Georgics, 
iii. 9; in Propertius, iii. i; in Ovid's Metamorphoses, xw. 871 seq. ; and 
in Martial, x. 27 seq. Among French sonnetteers Ronsard attacked the 
theme most boldly. His odes and sonnets promise immortality to the 
persons to whom they are addressed with an extravagant and a 
monotonous liberality. The following lines from Ronsard's Ode (livre i. 
No. vii) 'An Seigneur Carnavalet,' illustrate his habitual treatment 
of the theme : 



C'est un travail de bon-heur 
Chanter les hommes louables, 
Et leur bastir un honneur 
Seul vainqueur des ans muables. 
Le marbre on I'airain vestu 
D'un labeur vif par Tenclume 
N'animent tant la vertu 
Que les Muses par la plume. . . 



Les neuf divines pucelles 
Gardent ta gloire chez elles; 
Et mon luth, qu'ell'ont fait estre 
De leurs secrets le grand prestre. 
Par cest hymne solennel 
Respandra dessus ta race 
Je ne sgay quoy de sa grace 
Qui te doit faire eternel. 



(^CEuvres de Ronsard, ed. Blanchemain, ii. 58, 62.) 
I quote two other instances from Ronsard on p. 120, note 2. 
Desportes was also prone to indulge in the same conceit; cf his 
Cleonice, sonnet 62, which Daniel appropriated bodily in his Delia 
(Sonnet xxvi). Desportes warns his mistress that she will live in his 
verse like the phoenix in fire. 

2 Ed. Shuckburgh, p. 62. ^ Shakespeare Sec. p. 93. 



THE BORROWED CONCEITS OF THE SONNETS 1 19 

verse became a staple and indeed an inevitable topic. 
Spenser wrote in his ' Amoretti ' (1595, Sonnet Ixxv): 

My verse your virtues rare shall eternize, 
And in the heavens write your glorious name.^ 

Drayton and Daniel developed the conceit with 
unblushing iteration. Drayton, who spoke of his 
efforts as * my immortal song ' {Idea, vi. 14) and * my 
world-out-wearing rhymes ' (xliv. 7), embodied the 
vaunt in such lines as : 

While thus my pen strives to eternize thee {Idea, xliv. i). 
Ensuing ages yet my rhymes shall cherish {ib. xliv. II). 
My name shall mount unto eternity (ib. xliv. 14). 
All that I seek is to eternize thee (Jb. xlvii. 14). 

Daniel was no less explicit : 

This \^sc. verse] may remain thy lasting monument {Delia, xxxvii. 9). 

Thou mayst in after ages live esteemed, 

Unburied in these lines {ib. xxxix. 9-10). 

These \^sc. my verses] are the arks, the trophies I erect 

That fortify thy name against old age ; 

And these \_sc. verses] thy sacred virtues must protect 

Against the dark and time's consuming rage {ib. 1. 9-12). 

Shakespeare, in his references to his * eternal 
lines' (xviii. 12) and in the assurances that he gives 
the subject of his addresses that the sonnets are, 

1 Spenser, when commemorating the death of the Earl of Warwick 
in the Ruines of Time (c. 1591), assured the Earl's widowed Countess, 

Thy Lord shall nev'er die the whiles this verse 
Shall live, and surely it shall live for ever : 
For ever it shall live, and shall rehearse 
His worthie praise, and vertues dying never, 
Though death his soul doo from his body sever; 
And thou thyself herein shalt also live: 
Such grace the heavens doo to my verses give. 



120 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

in Daniel's exact phrase, his 'monument' (Ixxxi. 9, 
cvii. 13), was merely accommodating himself to the 
prevailing taste. Characteristically in Sonnet Iv 
he invested the topic with a splendour that was not 
approached by any other poet : ^ 

Not marble, nor the gilded monuments 

Of princes, shall outlive this powerful rhyme; ^ 

1 Other references to the topic appear in Sonnets xix, liv, Ix, Ixiii, 
Ixv, Ixxxi, and cvii. 

2 See the quotation from Ronsard on p. 114, note i. This sonnet 
is also very like Ronsard's Ode (livre v. No. xxxii) 'A sa Muse,' 
which opens : 

Plus dur que fer j'ay fini mon ouvrage, 
Que I'an, dispos a demener les pas, 
Que I'eau, le vent ou le brulant orage, 
L'injuriant, ne ru'ront point a bas. 
Quand ce viendra que le dernier trespas 
M'assoupira d'un somme dur, a I'heure, 
Sous le tombeau tout Ronsard n'ira pas, 
Restant de luy la part meilleure. ... 
Sus donque, Muse, emporte au ciel la gloire 
Que j'ay gaignee, annongant la victoire 
Dont a bon droit je me voy jouissant, . . . 

Cf. also Ronsard's Sonnet Ixxii in Amours (livre i), where he declares 
that his mistress's name 

Victorieux des peuples et des rois 
S'en voleroit sus I'aile de ma ryme. 

But Shakespeare, like Ronsard, knew Horace's far-famed Ode (bk. iii. 

30): 

Exegi monumentum sere perennius 
Regalique situ pyramidum altius, 
Quod noii imber edax, non Aquilo impotens 
Possit diruere, aut innumerabilis 
Annorum series, et fuga temporum. 

Nor can there be any doubt that Shakespeare wrote with a direct 
reference to the concluding nine lines of Ovid's Metamorphoses (xv. 

871-9): 

Jamque opus exegi, quod nee Jovis ira nee ignes. 
Nee poterit ferrum, nee edax abolere vetustas. 
Cum volet ilia dies, quae nil nisi eorporis hujus 



THE BORROWED CONCEITS OF THE SONNETS 121 

But you shall shine more bright in these contents 

Than unswept stone besmear'd with sluttish time. 

When wasteful war shall statues overturn, 

And broils root out the work of masonry, 

Nor Mars his sword nor war's quick fire shall burn 

The living record of your memory. 

'Gainst death and all-oblivious enmity 

Shall you pace forth ; your praise shall still find room 

Even in the eyes of all posterity 

That wear this world out to the ending doom. 

So, till the judgement that yourself arise, 

You live in this, and dwell in lovers' eyes. 

The imitative element is no less conspicuous in 
the sonnets that Shakespeare distinctively addresses 
to a woman. In two of the latter (cxxxv-vi), where 
he quibbles over the fact of the identity of his own 



Jus habet, incerti spatium mihi finiat sevi; 
Parte tamen meliore mei super alta perennis 
Astra ferar nomenque erit indelebile nostrum. 
• 
This passage was familiar to Shakespeare in one of his favourite books 
— Golding's translation of the Metamorphoses. Golding's rendering 
opens : 

Now have I brought a worke to end which neither Jove's fierce wrath 
Nor sword nor fire nor fretting age, with all the force it hath 
Are able to abolish quite, &c. 

Meres, after his mention of Shakespeare's Sonnets in his Palladis Tamia 
(1598), quotes parts of both passages from Horace and Ovid, and gives 
a Latin paraphrase of his own, which, he says, would fit the lips of other 
contemporary poets besides Shakespeare. The introduction of the name 
Mars into Meres's paraphrase as well as into line 7 of Shakespeare's 
Sonnet Iv led Mr. Tyler (on what are in any case very trivial grounds) to 
the assumption that Shakespeare was borrowing from his admiring critic, 
and was therefore writing after 1598, when Meres's book was published. 
In Golding's translation reference is made to Mars by name (the Latin 
here calls the god Gradivus) a few lines above the passage already 
quoted, and the word caught Shakespeare's eye there. Shakespeare 
owed nothing to Meres's paraphrase, but Meres probably owed some- 
thing to passages in Shakespeare's Sonnets. 



122 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

name of Will with a lady's * will ' (the synonym in 
Elizabethan English of both ' lust ' and 'obstinacy'), he 
derisively challenges comparison with wire-drawn con- 
Conceits in ceits of rival sonnetteers, especially of Bar- 
dresTed^o' i^3.be Barnes,who had enlarged on hisdisdain- 
a woman, f^j mistrcss's 'wills,' and had turned the word 

* grace ' to the same punning account as Shakespeare 
turned the word 'will.'^ Similarly in Sonnet cxxx, 
beginning — 

My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun; 

Coral is far more red than her lips' red ... ~^ 

If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head,^ 

he satirises the conventional lists of precious stones, 
metals, and flowers, to which the sonnetteers likened 
their mistresses' features. 

In two sonnets (cxxvii and cxxxii) Shakespeare 
amiably notices the black complexion, hair, and 
„, . eyes of his mistress, and expresses a pre- 

The praise ■' ' r jr 

of ' black- f erence for features of that hue over those 

of the fair hue which was, he tells us, more 

often associated in poetry with beauty. He com- 

1 See Appendix viii, ' The Will Sonnets,' for the interpretation 
of Shakespeare's conceit and like efforts of Barnes. 

'^ Wires in the sense of hair was peculiarly distinctive of the 
sonnetteers' affected vocabulary. Cf. Daniel's Delia, 1591, No. xxvi, 

* And golden hair may change to silver wire'' ; Lodge's Phillis, 1595, 

* Made blush the beauties of her curled tvire ' ; Barnes's Parthenophil, 
sonnet xlviii, ' Her hairs no grace of golden ivires want.' The com- 
parison of lips with coral is not uncommon outside the Elizabethan 
sonnet, but it was universal there. Cf. * Coral-coloured lips ' {Zepkeria, 
1594, No. xxiii); * No coral is her lip' (Lodge's Phillis, 1595, No. 
viii). 'Ce beau coral 'are the opening words of Ronsard's Atnours, 
livre i. No. xxiii, where a list is given of stones and metals comparable 
with women's features. 



THE BORROWED CONCEITS OF THE SONNETS 1 23 

mends the ' dark lady ' for refusing to practise those 
arts by which other women of the day gave their hair 
and faces colours denied them by Nature. Here 
Shakespeare repeats almost verbatim his own lines 
in 'Love's Labour's Lost' (iv. iii. 241-7), where the 
heroine Rosaline is described as * black as ebony,' 
with * brows decked in black,' and in * mourning ' for 
her fashionable sisters' indulgence in the disguising 
arts of the toilet. * No face is fair that is not full so 
black,' exclaims Rosaline's lover. But neither in the 
sonnets nor in the play can Shakespeare's praise of 
' blackness ' claim the merit of being his own invention. 
Sir Philip Sidney, in sonnett vii of his 'Astrophel 
and Stella,' had anticipated it. The * beams ' of the 
eyes of Sidney's mistress were ' wrapt in colour 
black' and wore *this mourning weed,' so • 

That whereas black seems beauty's contrary, 
She even in black doth make all beauties flow.^ 

To his praise of ' blackness ' in ' Love's Labour's 
Lost ' Shakespeare appends a playful but caustic com- 
ment on the paradox that he detects in the conceit.^ 
Similarly, the sonnets, in which a dark complexion 

^ Shakespeare adopted this phraseology of Sidney literally in both 
the play and the sonnet; while Sidney's further conceit that the lady's 
eyes are in ' this mourning weed' in order ' to honour all their deaths 
who for her bleed' is reproduced in Shakespeare's Sonnet cxxxii — one 
of the two under consideration — where he tells his mistress that her eyes 
'have put on black' to become 'loving mourners' of him who is 
denied her love. 

2 O paradox ! Black as the badge of hell, 
The hue of dungeons and the scowl of night 

(Loz'e's Labotir' s Lost, iv. iii. 254-5). 
To look like her are chimney-sweepers b'ack, 
And since her time are colliers counted bright, 
And Ethiops of their sweet complexion crack. 
Dark needs no candle now, for dark is ight (/3. 266-9). 



124 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE = 

is pronounced to be a mark of beauty, are followed 
by others in which the poet argues in self-con- 
futation that blackness of feature is hideous in a 
woman, and invariably indicates moral turpitude or 
blackness of heart. Twice, in much the same language 
as had already served a like purpose in the play, does 
he mock his ' dark lady ' with this uncomplimentary 
interpretation of dark-coloured hair and eyes. 

The two sonnets, in which this view of ' blackness ' 
is developed, form part of a series of twelve.^which 
belongs to a special category of sonnetteering effort. 
In them Shakespeare abandons the sugared sentiment 
which characterises most of his hundred and forty-two 
remaining sonnets. He grows vituperative and pours 
The son- 3- volley of passiouatc abuse upon a woman 
vftupera- whom he represents as disdaining his ad- 
tion. vances. The genuine anguish of a rejected 

lover often expresses itself in curses both loud and 
deep, but the mood of blinding wrath which the' rejec- 
tion of a lovesuit may rouse in a passionate nature 
does not seem from the internal evidence to be reflected 
genuinely in Shakespeare's sonnets of vituperation. 
It was inherent in Shakespeare's genius that he should 
import more dramatic intensity than any other poet 
into sonnets of a vituperative type ; but there is also 
in his vituperative sonnets a declamatory parade of 
figurative extravagance which suggests that the emo- 
tion is feigned and that the poet is striking an attitude. 
He cannot have been in earnest in seeking to conciliate 
his disdainful mistress — a result at which the vitu- 
perative sonnets purport to aim — when he tells her 



THE BORROWED CONCEITS OF THE SONNETS 12$ 

that she is ' black as hell, as dark as night,' and with 
* so foul a face ' is ' the bay where all men ride.' 

But external evidence is more conclusive as to 
the artificial construction of the vituperative sonnets. 
Again a comparison of this series with the efforts of 
the modish sonnetteers assigns to it its true character. 
Every sonnetteer of the sixteenth century, at some 
point in his career, devoted his energies to vituperation 
of a cruel siren. Ronsard in his sonnets celebrated in 
language quite as furious as Shakespeare's a ' fierce 
tigress,' a * murderess,' a 'Medusa.' Barnabe Barnes af- 
fected to contend in his sonnets with a female ' tyrant,' 
a ' Medusa,' a ' rock.' 'Women' (Barnes laments) 'are 
by nature proud as devils.' The monotonous and arti- 
ficial regularity with which the sonnetteers sounded the 
vituperative stop, whenever they had exhausted their 
notes of adulation, excited ridicule in both England 
and France. In Shakespeare's early life the conven- 
tion was wittily parodied by Gabriel Harvey in ' An 
Amorous Odious Sonnet intituled The Student's Loove 
or Hatrid, or both or neither, or what shall please the 
^ , . , loovins: or hatins: reader, either in sport or 

Gabriel "^^ o ^ l 

Harvey's eamcst, to make of such contrary passions 
Odious as are here discoursed.' ^ After extolling the 
. onne . bcauty and virtue of his mistress above that 
of Aretino's Angelica, Petrarch's Laura, Catullus's 
Lesbia, and eight other far-famed objects of poetic 
adoration, Harvey suddenly denounces her in bur- 
lesque rhyme as 'a serpent in brood,' 'a poisonous 

1 The parody, which is not in sonnet form, is printed in Harvey's 
Letter-book (Camden Soc. pp. 101-43). 



126 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

toad,' * a heart of marble,' and * a stony mind as 
passionless as a block.' Finally he tells her, 

If ever there were she-devils incarnate, 
They are altogether in thee incorporate. 

In France, Etienne Jodelle, a professional sonnet- 

Vv teer, although he is best known as a dramatist, made 

"*" , . late in the second half of the sixteenth cen- 

1 odelle s 

'Contr' ^ tury an independent endeavour of like kind 
to stifle by means of parody the vogue of the 
vituperative sonnet. Jodelle designed a collection of 
three hundred sonnets which he inscribed to 'hate of a 
woman,' and he appropriately entitled them ' Contr' 
Amours ' in distinction from ' Amours,' the term applied 
to sonnets in the honeyed vein. Only seven of Jodelle's 
* Contr' Amours ' are extant, but there is sufficient 
identity of tone between them and Shakespeare's vitu- 
perative efforts to discover in Shakespeare's invec- 
tives sparks of Jodelle's satiric fire.^ The ' dark lady ' 

1 No. vii of Jodelle's Contr'' Amours runs thus : 

Combien de fois mes vers ont-ils dore 

Ces cheueux noirs dignes d'vne Meduse? 

Combien de fois ce teint noir qui m'amuse, 

Ay-ie de lis et roses colore ? 
Combien ce front de rides laboure 

Ay-ie applani ? et quel a fait ma Muse 

Le gros sourcil, ou folle elle s'abuse, 

Ayant sur luy I'arc d' Amour figure? 
Quel ay-ie fait son ceil se renfon9ant? 

Quel ay-ie fait son grand nez rougissant? 

Quelle sa bouche et ses noires dents quelles 
Quel ay-ie fait le reste de ce corps? 

Qui, me sentant endurer mille morts, 

Viuoit heureux de mes peines mortelles. 

(Jodelle's CEuvres, 1597, PP- 9i~94-) 

With this should be compared Shakespeare's Sonnets cxxxvii, cxlviii, 
and cl. Jodelle's feigned remorse for having lauded the black hair and 



THE BORROWED CONCEITS OF THE SONNETS 12/ 

of Shakespeare's ' Sonnets' may therefore be relegated 
to the ranks of the creatures of his fancy. It is quite 
possible that he may have met in real life a dark-com- 
plexioned siren, and it is possible that he may have 
fared ill at her disdainful hands. But no such incident 
is needed to account for the presence of the ' dark 
lady ' in the sonnets. It was the exacting conventions 
of the sonnetteering contagion, and not his personal 
experiences or emotions, that impelled Shakespeare to 
give the * dark lady ' of his * Sonnets ' a poetic being.^ 

complexion of his mistress is one of the most singular of several strange 
coincidences. In No. vi of his Contr' Amours Jodelle, after reproach- 
ing his ' traitres vers ' with having untruthfully described his siren as 
a beauty, concludes : 

Ja si long temps faisant d'un Diable vn Ange 
Vous m'ouurez Tceil en I'iniuste louange, 
Et m'aueuglez en I'iniuste tourment. 

With this should be compared Shakespeare's Sonnet cxliv, lines 9-10 : 

And whether that my angel be turn'd fiend 
Suspect I may, yet not directly tell. 

A conventional sonnet of extravagant vituperation, which Drummond 
of Hawthornden translated from Marino {Rime, 1602, pt. i. p. ^6), is 
introduced with grotesque inappropriateness into Drummond's collec- 
tion of ' sugared ' sonnets (see pt. i. No. xxxv : Drummond's Poems, 
ed. W. C. Ward, i. 69, 217). 

1 The theories that all the sonnets addressed to a woman were 
addressed to the ' dark lady,' and that the * dark lady ' is identifiable 
with Mary Fitton, a mistress of the Earl of Pembroke, are baseless 
conjectures. The extant portraits of Mary Fitton prove her to be fair. 
The introduction of her name into the discussion is solely due to the 
mistaken notion that Shakespeare was the protege of Pembroke, that 
most of the sonnets were addressed to him, and that the poet was pro- 
bably acquainted with his patron's mistress. See Appendix vii. The 
expressions in two of the vituperative sonnets to the effect that the dis- 
dainful mistress had 'robb'd others' beds' revenues of their rents' (cxlii. 8) 
and ' in act her bed-vow broke ' (clii. 37) have been held to imply that 



128 .:. WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE ' 

She has been compared, not very justly, with Shake- 
speare's splendid creation of Cleopatra in his play of 
* Antony and Cleopatra.' From one point of view the 
same criticism may be passed on both. There is no 
greater and no less ground for seeking in Shakespeare's 
personal environment the original of the ' dark lady ' 
of his sonnets than for seeking there the original of his 
Queen of Egypt. 

the woman denounced by Shakespeare was married. The first quotation 
can only mean that she was unfaithful with married meUjJbut both 
quotations seem to be general phrases of abuse, the meaning of which 
should not be pressed closely. 



PATRONAGE OF THE EARL OF SOUTHAMPTON 129 



.IX 

THE PATRONAGE OF THE EARL 'OF 
SOUTHAMPTON 

Amid the borrowed conceits and poetic figures of 
Shakespeare's sonnets there lurk suggestive references 
to the circumstances in his external life that attended 
their composition. If few can be safely regarded as 
autobiographic revelations of sentiment, many of them 
offer evidence of the relations in which he stood to a 
patron, and to the position that he sought to fill in 
the circle of that patron's literary retainers. Twenty 
Biographic sounets, which may for purposes of exposi- 
^i^^JP^^^ tion be entitled 'dedicatory' sonnets, are ad- 

dedica- •' 

tory' dressed to one who is declared without peri- 

sonnets. 1 . 1-1 T • T r 

phrasis and without disguise to be a patron of 
the poet's verse (Nos. xxiii, xxvi, xxxii, xxxvii, xxxviii, 
Ixix, Ixxvii-lxxxvi, c, ci, ciii, cvi). In one of these — 
Sonnet Ixxviii — Shakespeare asserted : 

So oft have I invoked thee for my Muse 
And found such fair assistance in my verse 
As every alien pen hath got my use 
And under thee their poesy disperse. 

Subsequently he regretfully pointed out how his 
patron's readiness to accept the homage of other 

K 



I30 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

poets seemed to be thrusting him from the enviable 
place of pre-eminence in his patron's esteem. 

Shakespeare's biographer is under an obligation 
to attempt an identification of the persons whose 
The Earl relations with the poet are defined so 
of South- explicitly. The problem presented by the 

ampton . . 

the poet's patron is simple. Shakespeare states un- 

sole patron. • n i i i i 

equivocally that he has no patron but one. 

Sing [jc. O Muse !] to the ear that doth thy lays esteem, 
And gives thy pen both skill and argument (c. 7-8). _ 
For to no other pass my verses tend 
Than of your graces and your gifts to tell (ciii. 11-12). 

The Earl of Southampton, the patron of his narrative 
poems, is the only patron of Shakespeare that is known 
to biographical research. No contemporary document 
or tradition gives the faintest suggestion that Shake- 
speare was the friend or dependent of any other man of 
rank. A trustworthy tradition corroborates the testi- 
mony respecting Shakespeare's close intimacy with 
the Earl that is given in the dedicatory epistles 
of his 'Venus and Adonis' and 'Lucrece,' penned re- 
spectively in 1593 and 1594. According to Nicholas 
Rowe, Shakespeare's first adequate biographer, * there 
is one instance so singular in its magnificence 
of this patron of Shakespeare's that if I had not 
been assured that the story was handed down by 
Sir William D'Avenant, who was probably very well 
acquainted with his affairs, I should not venture to 
have inserted ; that my Lord Southampton at one 
time gave him a thousand pounds to enable him to 
go through with a purchase which he heard he had a 



PATRONAGE OF THE EARL OF SOUTHAMFfON 131 

mind to. A bounty very great and very rare at any 
time.' 

There is no difficulty in detecting the lineaments 
of the Earl of Southampton in those of the man 
who is distinctively greeted in the sonnets as the 
poet's patron. Three of the twenty ' dedicatory ' 
sonnets merely translate into the language of poetry 
the expressions of devotion which had already done 
duty in the dedicatory epistle in prose that prefaces 
' Lucrece.' That epistle to Southampton runs: 

The love^ I dedicate to your lordship is without end; whereof this 
pamphlet, without beginning, is but a superfluous moiety. The warrant 
I have of your honourable disposition, not the worth of my untutored 
lines, makes it assured of acceptance. What I have done is yours; 
what I have to do is yours; being part in all I have, devoted yours. 
Were my worth greater, my duty would show greater; meantime, as 
it is, it is bound to your lordship, to whom I wish long life, still 
lengthened with all happiness. 

Your lordship's in all duty, 

William Shakespeare. 

Sonnet xxvi is a gorgeous rendering of these 
sentences : 

1 * Lover ' and * love ' in Elizabethan English were ordinary 
synonyms for 'friend' and 'friendship.' Brutus opens his address to 
the citizens of Rome with the words, ' Romans, countrymen, and lovers^ 
and subsequently describes Julius Caesar as ' my best lover ' {Julius 
CiEsar, III. ii. 13-49). Portia, when referring to Antonio, the bosom 
friend of her husband Bassanio, calls him ' the bosom lover of my lord ' 
{Merchant of Venice, III, iv. 17). Ben Jonson in his letters to Donne 
commonly described himself as his correspondent's 'ever true lover'; 
and Drayton, writing to William Drummond of Hawthornden, in- 
formed hiin that an admirer of his literary work was in love with him. 
The word ' love ' was habitually applied to the sentiment subsisting 
between an author and his patron. Nash, when dedicating Jack 
Wilton in 1594 to Southampton, calls him 'a dear lover ... of the 
lovers of poets as of the poets themselves.' 



132 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

Lord of my love, to whom in vassalage 

Thy merit hath my duty strongly knit, 

To thee I send this written ambassage, 

To witness duty, not to show my wit : 

Duty so great, which wit so poor as mine 

May make seem bare, in wanting words to show it, 

But that I hope some good conceit of thine 

In thy soul's thought, all naked, will bestow it 

Till whatsoever star that guides my moving, 

Points on me graciously with fair aspect, 

And puts apparel on my tatter'd loving 

To show me worthy of thy sweet respect : 

Then may I dare to boast how I do love thee; 

Till then not show my head where thou may'st provcme.^ 

The * Lucrece ' epistle's intimation that the pa- 
tron's love alone gives value to the poet's ' untutored 
lines ' is repeated in Sonnet xxxii, which doubtless 
reflected a moment of depression : 

If thou survive my well-contented day, 
When that churl Death my bones with dust shall cover. 
And shalt by fortune once more re-survey 
These poor rude lines of thy deceased lover, 
Compare them with the bettering of the time. 
And though they be outstripp'd by every pen. 
Reserve them for my love, not for their rhyme. 
Exceeded by the height of happier men. 

1 There is little doubt that this sonnet was parodied by Sir John 
Davies in the ninth and last of his 'gulling' sonnets, in which he 
ridicules the notion that a man of wit should put his wit in vassalage to 
any one. 

To love my lord I do knight's service owe, 

And therefore now he hath my wit in ward; 

But while it [z'.e. the poet's wit] is in his tuition so 

Methinks he doth intreat [i.e. treat] it passing hard ... 

But why should love after minority 

(When I have passed the one and twentieth year) 

Preclude my wit of his sweet liberty, 

And make it still the yoke of wardship bear? 

I fear he [i.e. my lord] hath another title [i.e. right to my wit] got 

And holds my wit now for an idiot. 



PATRONAGE OF THE EARL OF SOUTHAMPTON 1 33 

O, then vouchsafe me but this loving thought : 

* Had my friend's Muse grown with this growing age, 

A dearer birth than this his love had brought, 

To march in ranks of better equipage; ^ 

But since he died and poets better prove, 
^ Theirs for their style I'll read, his for his love.* 

A like vein is pursued in* greater exaltation of spirit 
in Sonnet xxxviii : 

How can my Muse want subject to invent. 

While thou dost breathe, that pour'st into my verse 

Thine own sweet argument, too excellent 

For every vulgar paper to rehearse? 

O give thyself the thanks, if aught in me 

Worthy perusal stand against thy sight; 

For who's so dumb that cannot write to thee, 

When thou thyself dost give invention light? 

Be thou the tenth Muse, ten times more in worth 

Than those old nine which rhymers invocate; 

And he that calls on thee, let him bring forth 

Eternal numbers to outlive long date. 

If my slight Muse do please these curious days, 
The pain be mine, but thine shall be the praise. 

The central conceit here so finely developed — that 
the patron may claim as his own handiwork the 
protege's verse because he inspires it — belongs to the 
most conventional schemes of dedicatory adulation. 
When Daniel, in 1592, inscribed his volume of sonnets 

1 Mr. Tyler assigns this sonnet to the year 1598 or later, on the 
fallacious ground that this line was probably imitated from an ex- 
pression in Marston's Pigmalion^s Image, published in 1598, where 
* stanzas ' are said to ' march rich bedight in warlike equipage.* The 
suggestion of plagiarism is quite gratuitous. The phrase was common 
in Elizabethan literature long before Marston employed it. Nash, in 
his preface to Green's Menaphon, which was published in 1589, wrote 
that the works of the poet Watson * march in equipage of honour with 
any of your ancient poets.' (Cf. Peele's Works, ed. Bullen, ii. 236.) 



134 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

entitled ' Delia ' to the Countess of Pembroke, he 
played in the prefatory sonnet on the same note, and 
used in the concluding couplet almost the same words 
as Shakespeare. Daniel wrote : 

Great patroness of these my humble rhymes, 

Which thou from out thy greatness dost inspire . . . 

O leave [i.e. cease] not still to grace thy work in me . . . 

Whereof the travail I may challenge mine, 

But yet the glory, madam, must be thine. 

Elsewhere in the sonnets we hear fainter echoes of 
the ' Lucrece ' epistle. Repeatedly does the^sonnet- 
teer renew the assurance given there that his patron 
is 'part of all' he has or is. Frequently do we meet 
in the sonnets with such expressions as these : 

[I] by z. part of all yowc glory live (xxxvii. 12); 

Thou art all the better part of uie (xxxix. 2); 

My spirit is thine, the better part of me (Ixxiv. 8); 

while *the love without end' which Shakespeare had 
vowed to Southampton in the light of day reappears 
in sonnets addressed to the youth as 'eternal love' 
(cviii. 9), and a devotion 'what shair have no end' 
(ex. 9). 

The identification of the rival poets whose 'richly 
compiled' 'comments' of his patron's 'praise' ex- 
cited Shakespeare's jealousy is a more difficult 
inquiry than the identification of the patron. The 
rival poets with their 'precious phrase by all the 
Muses filed' (Ixxxv. 4) must be sought among the 
Rivals in Writers who eulogised Southampton and are 
Ws^^"^^" known to have shared his patronage. The 
favour. fig^ Qf choice is not small. Southampton 
from boyhood cultivated literature and the society of 



PATRONAGE OF THE EARL OF SOUTHAMPTON 1 35 

literary men. In 1594 no nobleman received so 
abundant a measure of adulation from the con- 
temporary world of letters.^ Thomas Nash justly 
described the Earl, when dedicating to him his 
'Life of Jack Wilton' in 1594, as 'a dear lover and 
cherisher as well of the lovers of poets as of the 
poets themselves.' Nash addressed to him many 
affectionately phrased sonnets. The prolific sonnet- 
teer Barnabe Barnes and the miscellaneous literary 
practitioner Gervase Markham confessed, respectively 
in 1593 and 1595, yearnings for Southampton's coun- 
tenance in sonnets which glow hardly less ardently 
than Shakespeare's with admiration for his personal 
charm. Similarly John Florio, the Earl's Italian tutor, 
who is traditionally reckoned among Shakespeare's 
literary acquaintances,^ wrote to Southampton in 
1598, in his dedicatory epistle before his ' Worlde of 
Wordes ' (an Italian-English dictionary), 'as to me 
and many more, the glorious and gracious sunshine 
of your honour hath infused light and life.' 

Shakespeare magnanimously and modestly de- 
scribed tha.t J>rote£-e of Southampton, whom he deemed 
a specially dangerous rival, as an * able ' and a 'better' 
'spirit,' 'a worthier pen,' a vessel 'of tall building and 
of goodly pride,' compared with whom he was himself 
'a worthless boat.' He detected a touch of magic in 
the man's writing. His ' spirit,' Shakespeare hyperboli- 
cally declared, had been 'by spirits taught to write 

1 See Appendix iv for a full account of Southampton's relations 
with Nash and other men of letters. 

2 See p. 88, noU. 



136 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

above a mortal pitch,' and *an affable familiar ghost* 
nightly gulled him with intelligence. Shakespeare's 
^, , dismay at the fascination exerted on his 

Shake- •' 

speare's patron by 'the proud full sail of his [rival's] 
a rival great vcrsc ' sealed for a time, he declared, 
^°^ ' the springs of his own invention (Ixxxvi). 

There is no need to insist too curiously on the 
justice of Shakespeare's laudation of *the other 
poet's' powers. He was presumably a new-comer in 
the literary field who surprised older men of benevo- 
lent tendency into admiration by his promise rather 
than by his achievement. * Eloquence and courtesy,' 
wrote Gabriel Harvey at the time, 'are ever bountiful in 
the amplifying vein ' ; and writers of amiability, Harvey 
adds, habitually blazoned the perfections that they 
hoped to see their young friends achieve, in language 
implying that they had already achieved them. All 
the conditions of the problem are satisfied by the 
rival's identification with the young poet and scholar 
Barnabe Barnes, a poetic panegyrist of Southampton 
and a prolific sonnetteer, who was deemed by con- 
temporary critics certain to prove a great poet. His 
first collection of sonnets, ' Parthenophil and Parthe- 
nophe,' with many odes and madrigals interspersed, 
was printed in 1593; and his second, *A Centurie of 
Spiritual Sonnets,' in 1595. Loud applause greeted 
the first book, which included numerous adaptations 
from the classical, Italian, and French poets, and dis- 
closed, among many crudities, some fascinating lyrics 
r.nd at least one almost perfect sonnet (No. Ixvi, 
'Ah, sweet content, where is thy mild abode?'). 



PATRONAGE OF THE EARL OF SOUTHAMPTON 1 37 

Thomas Churchyard called Barnes * Petrarch's scholar ' ; 
the learned Gabriel Harvey bade him *go forward in 
maturity as he had begun in pregnancy,' and ' be the 
gallant poet, like Spenser ' ; Campion judged his verse 
Barnabe to be 'heady and strong.' In a sonnet that 
mobabiy Bames addrcsscd in this earliest volume to 
the rival. |-]^g ' virtuous ' Earl of Southampton he 
declared that his patron's eyes were * the heavenly 
lamps that give the Muses light,' and that his sole 
ambition was ' by flight to rise' to a height worthy 
of his patron's 'virtues.' Shakespeare sorrowfully 
pointed out in Sonnet Ixxviii. that his lord's eyes 

that taught the dumb on high to sing, 
And heavy ignorance aloft to fly, 
Have added feathers to the learned's wing. 
And given grace a double majesty; 

while in the following sonnet he asserted that the 
* worthier pen ' of his dreaded rival when lending his 
patron * virtue ' was guilty of plagiarism, for he * stole 
that word ' from his patron's * behavior.' The emphasis 
laid by Barnes on the inspiration that he sought from 
Southampton's 'gracious eyes ' on the one hand, and 
his reiterated references to his patron's * virtue ' on the 
other, suggest that Shakespeare in these sonnets 
directly alluded to Barnes as his chief competitor in 
the hotly contested race for Southampton's favour. 
In Sonnet Ixxxv Shakespeare declares that * he cries 
Amen to every hymn that able spirit [?>. his rival] 
affords.' Very few poets of the day in England fol- 
lowed Ronsard's practice of bestowing the title of hymn 
on miscellaneous poems, but Barnes twice applies 



138 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

the word to his poems of love.^ When, too, Shake- 
speare in Sonnet Ixxx employs nautical metaphors to 
indicate the relations of himself and his rival with 
his patron — 

My saucy bark inferior far to his . . . 

Your shallowest help will hold me up afloat, — • 

he seems to write with an eye on Barnes's identical 
choice of metaphor: 

My fancy's ship tossed here and there by these \^sc. sorrow's floods] 

Still floats in danger ranging to and fro. 

How fears my thoughts' swift pinnace thine hard rock! ^ ~~ 

Gervase Markham is equally emphatic in his 
sonnet to Southampton on the potent influence of 
Q^^g^ his patron's 'eyes,' which, he says, crown 

theories 'the most victorious pen' — a possible refe- 

as to the 

rival's rencc to Shakespeare. Nash's poetic praises 

of the Earl are no less enthusiastic, and are 
of a finer literary temper than Markham's. But 
Shakespeare's description of his rival's literary work 
fits far less closely the verse of Markham and Nash 
than the verse of their fellow-aspirant Barnes. 

Many critics argue that the numbing fear of his 
rival's genius and of its influence on his patron to 
which Shakespeare confessed in the sonnets was 
more likely to be evoked by the work of George 
Chapman than by that of any other contemporary 
poet. But Chapman had produced no conspicuously 
* great verse ' till he began his translation of Homer in 
1598 ; and although he appended in 16 10 to a complete 

1 Cf. Parthenophil, Madrigal i. line 12; Sonnet xvii. line 9. 

2 Parthenophil, Sonnet xci. 



PATRONAGE OF THE EARL OF SOUTHAMPTON 1 39 

edition of his translation a sonnet to Southampton, 
it was couched in the coldest terms of formality, and 
it was one of a series of sixteen sonnets each addressed 
to a distinguished nobleman with whom the writer 
implies that he had no previous relations.^ Drayton, 

1 Much irrelevance has been introduced into the discussion of 
Chapman's claim to be the rival poet. Professor Minto in his Charac- 
teristics of English Poets, p. 291, argued that Chapman was the man 
mainly because Shakespeare declared his competitor to be taught to 
w^rite by * spirits ' — ' his compeers by night ' — as w^ell as by * an affable 
familiar ghost ' which gulled him with intelligence at night (Ixxxvi. 5 
seq.) . Professor Minto saw in these phrases allusions to some remarks by 
Chapman in his Shadows of Night (1594), a poem on Night. There 
Chapman warned authors in one passage that the spirit of literature 
will often withhold itself from them unless it have ' drops of their 
blood like a heavenly familiar,' and in another place sportively invited 
' nimble and aspiring wits ' to join him in consecrating their endeavours 
to ' sacred night.' There is really no connection between Shakespeare's 
theory of the supernatural and nocturnal sources of his rival's influence 
and Chapman's trite allusion to the current faith in the power of 
' nightly familiars ' over men's minds and lives, or Chapman's invita- 
tion to his literary comrades to honour Night with him. It is superero- 
gatory to assume that Shakespeare had Chapman's phrases in his mind 
when alluding to superstitions which were universally acknowledged. 
It could be as easily argued on like grounds that Shakespeare was 
drawing on other authors. Nash in his prose tract called independently 
The Terrors of the Night, which was also printed in 1594, described 
the nocturnal habits of 'familiars' more explicitly than Chapman. 
The publisher Thomas Thorpe, in dedicating in 1600 Marlowe's trans- 
lation of Lucan (bk. i) to his friend Edward Blount, humorously 
referred to the same topic when he reminded Blount that 'this spirit 
\_i.e. Marlowe], whose ghost or genius is to be seen walk the Churchyard 
[of St. Paul's] in at the least three or four sheets . . . was sometime 
2i fa !Jii liar oiyoMX own.' On. the strength of these quotations, and 
accepting Professor Minto's line of argument, Nash, Thorpe, or Blount, 
whose 'familiar' is declared to have been no less a personage than 
Marlowe, has as good a claim as Chapman to be the rival poet of 
Shakespeare's sonnets. A second and equally impotent argument in 
Chapman's favour has been suggested. Chapman in the preface to his 



I40 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

Ben Jonson, and Marston have also been identified 
by various critics with 'the rival poet,' but none of 
these shared Southampton's bounty, nor are the 
terms which Shakespeare applies to his rival's verse 
specially applicable to the productions of any of them. 
Many besides the ' dedicatory ' sonnets are ad- 
dressed to a handsome youth of wealth and rank, for 
whom the poet avows 'love,' in the Elizabethan sense 
of friendship.^ Although no specific reference is made 
outside the twenty ' dedicatory ' sonnets to the youth 
Sonnets of ^^ ^ literary patron, and the clues to his 
friendship, {(^entity are elsewhere vaguer, there is good 
ground for the conclusion that the sonnets of dis- 
interested love or friendship also have Southampton 
for their subject. The sincerity of the poet's senti- 
ment is often open to doubt in these poems, but they 
seem to illustrate a real intimacy subsisting between 
Shakespeare and a young Maecenas. 

translation of the Iliads (i6ii) denounces without mentioning any name 
* a certain envious windsucker that hovers up and down, laboriously 
engrossing all the air with his luxurious ambition, and buzzing into 
every ear my detraction.' It is suggested that Chapman here retaliated 
on Shakespeare for his references to him as his rival in the sonnets; but it 
is out of the question that Chapman, were he the rival, should have 
termed those high compliments ' detraction.' There is no ground for 
identifying Chapman's * windsucker' with Shakespeare (cf. Wyndham, 
p. 255). The strongest point in favour of the theory of Chapman's 
identity with the rival poet Hes in the fact that each of the two sections 
of his poem Th& Shadow of the Night (1594) is styled a * hymn,' and 
Shakespeare in Sonnet Ixxxv. 6-7 credits his rival with writing 
'hymns.' But Drayton, in his Ilarmonie of the Church, 1591, and 
Barnes, as we have just seen, both wrote * hymns.' The word was not 
loosely used in Elizabethan English, as in sixteenth-century French, in 
the general sense of * poem.' 
1 See p. 131, note i. 



PATRONAGE OF THE EARL OF SOUTHAMPTON 141 

Extravagant compliment — ' gross painting ' 
Shakespeare calls it — was in England exceptionally 
conspicuous in the intercourse of patron and client 
during the last years of Elizabeth's reign. For this 
result the sovereign herself was in part responsible. 
Contemporary schemes of literary compliment seemed 
infected by the feigned accents of amorous passion 
and false rhapsodies on her physical beauty with 
which men of letters servilely sought to satisfy 
the old Queen's incurable greed of flattery.^ Sir 

1 Sir Walter Ralegh was wont to apostrophise his aged sovereign 
thus: 

Oh, hopeful love, my object and invention, 

Oh, true desire, the spur of my conceit. 
Oh, worthiest spirit, my mind's impulsion, 

Oh, eyes transparent, my affection's bait; 
Oh, princely form, my fancy's adamant. 

Divine conceit, my pain's acceptance. 
Oh, all in one! Oh, heaven on earth transparent! 

The seat of joy and love's abundance ! 

(Cf. Cynthia, a fragment in Poems of Raleigh, ed. Hannah, p, 33.) 
When Ralegh leaves Elizabeth's presence he tells us his * forsaken 
heart ' and his ' withered mind ' were ' widowed of all the joys ' they 
' once possessed.' Only some 500 lines (the twenty-first book and a 
fragment of another book) survive of Ralegh's poem Cynthia, the whole 
of which was designed to prove his loyalty to the Queen, and all the 
extant lines are in the same vein as those I quote. The complete 
poem extended to twenty-two books, and the lines exceeded 10,000, or 
five times as many as in Shakespeare's Sonnets. Richard Barnfield 
in his like-named poem of Cynthia, 1595, and Fulke Greville in sonnets 
addressed to Cynthia, also extravagantly described the Queen's beauty 
and graces. In 1599 Sir John Davies, poet and lawyer, apostrophised 
Elizabeth, who was then sixty-six years old, thus : ' 

Fair soul, since to the fairest body knit 

You give such lively life, such quickening power. 

Such sweet celestial influences to it 

As keeps it still in youth's immortal flower . . . 

O many, many years may you remain 

A happy angel to this happy land {Nosce Teipsum, dedication). 



142 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

Philip Sidney described with admirable point the 
adulatory excesses to which less exalted patrons were 
habituated by literary dependents. He gave the 
warning that as soon as a man showed interest in 
poetry or its producers, poets straightway pronounced 
him * to be most fair, most rich, most wise, most all.' 
* You shall dwell upon superlatives . . . Your soule 
shall be placed with Dante's Beatrice.' ^ The warmth 
of colouring which distinguishes many of the sonnets 
^^^ that Shakespeare, under the guise of dis- 

gances of interested friendship, addressed to the^outh 

literary , "'^ 

compii- can be matched at nearly all points in the 
adulation that patrons were in the habit of 
receiving from literary dependents in the style that 
Sidney described.^ 

Davies published in the same year twenty-six ' Hymnes of Astrea ' on 
Elizabeth's beauty and graces; each poem forms an acrostic on the 
words * Elizabetha Regina,' and the language of love is simulated on 
almost every page. 

1 Apologie for Poetrie (1595)5 ed. Shuckburgh, p. 62. 

2 Adulatory sonnets to patrons are met with in the preliminary or 
concluding pages of numerous sixteenth and seventeenth century books 
{e.g. the collection of sonnets addressed to James VI of Scotland in his 
Essay es of a Prentise, 1591, and the sonnets to noblemen before Spenser's 
Faerie Queene, at the end of Chapman's Iliad, and at the end of John 
Davies's Microcosmos, 1603). Other sonnets to patrons are scattered 
through collections of occasional poems, such as Ben Jonson's Poorest 
and Underwoods and Donne's Poems. Sonnets addressed to men are 
not only found in the preliminary pages, but are occasionally interpolated 
in sonnet-sequences of fictitious love. Sonnet xi in Drayton's sonnet- 
fiction called ' Idea ' (in 1599 edition) seems addressed to a man, in much 
the same manner as Shakespeare often addressed his hero; and a few 
others of Drayton's sonnets are ambiguous as to the sex of their subject. 
John Soothern's eccentric collection of love-sonnets, Pandora (1584), 
has sonnets dedicatory to the Earl of Oxford; and William Smith in 
his Chloris (1596) (a sonnet-fiction of the conventional kind) in two 
prefatory sonnets and in No. xlix of the substantive collection invokes 



PATRONAGE OF THE EARL OF SOUTHAMPTON 143 

Shakespeare assured his friend that he could 
never grow old (civ), that the finest types of beauty 
Patrons and chivalry in mediaeval romance lived 
addressed again in him (cvi), that absence from him 
in affec- ^^^ miserv, and that his affection for him 

tionate -^ ' 

terms. was Unalterable. Hundreds of poets openly 

the affectionate notice of Edmund Spenser. Throughout Europe 
* dedicatory ' sonnets or poems to women betray identical charac- 
teristics to those that were addressed to men. The poetic addresses 
to the Countess of Bedford and other noble patronesses of Donne, 
Ben Jonson, and their colleagues are always affectionate, often 
amorous, in their phraseology, and akin in temper to Shakespeare's 
sonnets of friendship. Nicholas Breton, in his poem T/ie Pilgritjiage 
to Paradise coy ned with the Countess of Pembroke's Love, 1592, and 
another work of his, The Countess of Pembroke' s Passion (first printed 
from manuscript in 1867), pays the countess, who was merely his 
literary patroness, a homage which is indistinguishable from the 
ecstatic utterances of a genuine and overmastering passion. The diffe- 
rence in the sex of the persons addressed by Breton and by Shakespeare 
seems to place their poems in different categories, but they both really 
belonged to the same class. They both merely display a protegPs 
loyalty to his patron, couched, according to current convention, in the 
strongest possible terms of personal affection. In Italy and France 
exactly the same vocabulary of adoration was applied by authors indif- 
ferently to patrons and patronesses. It is known that one series of 
Michael Angelo's impassioned sonnets was addressed to a young noble- 
man Tommaso dei Cavalieri, and another series to a noble patroness 
Vittoria Colonna, but the tone is the same in both, and internal evidence 
fails to enable the critic to distinguish between the two series. Only 
one English contemporary of Shakespeare published a long series of 
sonnets addressed to a man who does not prove on investigation to have 
been a professional patron. In 1595 Richard Barnfield appended to 
his poem Cynthia a set of twenty sonnets, in which he feignedly 
avowed affection for a youth called Ganymede. These poems do not 
belong to the same category as Shakespeare's, but to the category 
of sonnet-sequences of love in which it was customary to invoke a 
fictitious mistress. Barnfield explained that in his sonnets he attempted 
a variation on the conventional practice by fancifully adapting to the 
sonnet-form the second Of Virgil's Eclogues, in which the shepherd 
Corydon apostrophises the shepherd-boy Alexis. 



144 ..WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

gave the like assurances to their patrons. Southamp- 
ton was only one of a crowd of Maecenases whose 
panegyrists, writing without concealment in their own 
names, credited them with every perfection of mind 
and body, and ' placed them,' in Sidney's apt phrase, 
'with Dante's " Beatrice." ' 

Illustrations of the practice abound. Matthew 
Roydon wrote of his patron. Sir Phihp Sidney : 

His personage seemed most divine, 

A thousand graces one might count ' ^ 

Upon his lovely cheerful eyne. 

To heare him speak and sweetly smile 

You were in Paradise the while. 

Edmund Spenser in a fine sonnet told his patron, 
Admiral Lord Charles Howard, that ' his good per- 
sonage and noble deeds ' made him the pattern to 
the present age of the old heroes of whom * the antique 
poets' were 'wont so much to sing.' This compli- 
ment, which Shakespeare turns to splendid account in 
Sonnet cvi, recurs constantly in contemporary sonnets 
of adulation.! Ben Jonson apostrophised the Earl of 
Desmond as ' my best-best lov'd.' Campion told Lord 
Walden, the Earl of Suffolk's undistinguished heir, 
that although his muse sought to express his love, 
*the admired virtues' of the patron's youth 

Bred such despairing to his daunted Muse 
That it could scarcely utter naked truth.2 

1 Cf. Sonnet lix : 

Show me your image In some antique book . . . 

Oh sure I am the wits of former days 

To subjects worse have given admiring praise. 

2 Campion's Poems, ed. BuUen, pp. 148 seq. Cf. Shakespeare's 

Sonnets: 

O how I faint when I of you do write (Ixxx. i). 
Finding thy worth a limit past my praise (Ixxxii. 6). 



PATRONAGE OF THE EARL OF SOUTHAMPTON 1 45 

Dr. John Donne includes among his * Verse Letters ' 
to patrons several sonnets of similar temper. ^ 

The tone of yearning for a man's affection is 
sounded by Donne and Campion almost as plaintively 
in their sonnets to patrons as it was sounded by Shake- 
speare. Tasso, whose great example many Elizabe- 
than poets emulated, claimed to cherish the tenderest 
passion for his chief patron, Alfonso d'Este II, Duke 
of Ferrara, to whom he addressed numerous sonnets in 
harmony with that profession. * I was inflamed (he in- 
formed a later patron, the Duke of Urbino) with affec- 
tion for my lord [of Ferrara] more than ever was man 
with the love of woman, and I became unawares half 
an idolater. ' ^ Shakespeare seems almost to echo what 
was to the Italian sonnetteer the conventional note of 
a dependent's devotion, when he warns his * lord ' in 
Sonnet cv, 

Let not my love be called idolatry. 

There is at any rate nothing in the vocabulary of 
affection which Shakespeare employed in his sonnets 
of friendship to confute the theory that they were 
inscribed to a literary patron with whom his intimacy 
was of the kind normally subsisting at the time, in 
England no less than on the continent, between 
literary clients and their patrons. 

We know Shakespeare had only one literary pa- 
tron, the Earl of Southampton, and the view that that 
nobleman is the hero of the sonnets of * friendship ' is 
strongly corroborated by such definite details as can 
be deduced from the vague eulogies in those poems 

"•• Donne's Poems (in Muses' Library), ii. 34. 

2 Tasso, Opere, Pisa, 1821-32, vol. xiii. p. 298. 
L 



146 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

of the youth's gifts and graces. Every compliment, in 
fact, paid by Shakespeare to the youth, whether it be 
vaguely or definitely phrased, applies to Southampton 
without the least straining of the words. In real life 
Direct bcauty, birth, wealth, and wit sat ' crowned * 
references jn the Earl, whom poets acclaimed the 

to South- _ ^ 

ampton in handsomest of Elizabethan courtiers, as 

the sonnets , . , • . 1 1 r 1 , 

of friend- plamly as m the hero of the poet s verse. 
^ ^^' Southampton has left in his correspon- 

dence ample proofs of his literary learning and taste, 
and, like the hero of the sonnets, was ' as fair in 
knowledge as in hue. ' The opening sequence of 
seventeen sonnets, in which a youth of rank and 
wealth is admonished to marry and beget a son so 
that ' his fair house ' may not fall into decay, can only 
have been addressed to a young peer like Southamp- 
ton, who was as yet unmarried, had vast possessions, 
and was the sole male representative of his family. 
The sonnetteer's exclamation, * You had a father, let 
your son say so,' had pertinence to Southampton at 
any period between his father's death in his boyhood 
and the close of his bachelorhood in 1598. To 
no other peer of the day are the words exactly 
applicable. The * lascivious comment ' on his * wanton 
sport ' which pursues the young friend through the 
sonnets, and is so adroitly contrived as to add point 
to the picture of his fascinating youth and beauty, 
obviously associates itself with the reputation for 
sensual indulgence that Southampton acquired both at 
Court and, according to Nash, among men of letters.^ 
There is no force in the objection that the 

1 See p. 402, note i. 



PATRONAGE OF THE EARL OF SOUTHAMPTON 1 47 

young man of the sonnets of * friendship ' must have 
been another than Southampton because the terms 
in which he is often addressed imply extreme youth. 
In 1594, a date to which I refer most of the sonnets, 
His youth- Southampton was barely twenty-one, and 
fulness. ^^Q young man had obviously reached man- 
hood. In Sonnet civ Shakespeare notes that the 
first meeting between him and his friend took 
place three years before that poem was written, so 
that, if the words are to be taken literally, the poet 
may have at times embodied reminiscences of South- 
ampton when he was only seventeen or eighteen. 1 
But Shakespeare, already worn in worldly experience, 
passed his thirtieth birthday in 1594, and he proba- 
bly tended, when on the threshold of middle life, to 
exaggerate the youthfulness of the nobleman almost 
ten years his junior, who even later impressed his 
acquaintances by his boyish appearance and disposi- 
tion. ^ 'Young' was the epithet invariably applied 
to Southampton by all who knew anything of him 
even when he was twenty-eight. In 1601 Sir Robert 
Cecil referred to him as the ' poor young Earl.' 

But the most striking evidence of the identity of the 

1 Three years was the conventional period which sonnetteers allotted 
to the development of their passion. Cf. Ronsard, Sonnets pour 
Helene (No. xiv), beginning : 'Trois ans sont ja passez que ton ceil 
me tient pris.' 

2 Octavius Caesar at thirty-two is described by Mark Antony after 
the battle of Actium as the ' boy Caesar ' who * wears the rose of youth ' 
(^Antony and Cleopatra, ill. ii. 17 seq.). Spenser in his Astrnphel 
apostrophises Sir Philip Sidney on his death near the close of his 
thirty-second year as 'oh wretched boy' (I. 133) and ' luckless boy ' 
(1. 142) . Conversely it was a recognised convention among sonnetteers 
to exaggerate their own age. See p. 90, note. 



148 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

youth of the sonnets of ' friendship ' with Southamp- 
ton is found in the likeness of feature and complexion 
. which characterises the poet's description 
dence of of the vouth's outward appearance and 

portraits. . 

the extant pictures of Southampton as a 
young man. Shakespeare's many references to his 
youth's ' painted counterfeit ' (xvi, xxiv, xlvii, 
Ixvii) suggest that his hero often sat for his portrait, 
Southampton's countenance survives in probably 
more canvases than that of any of his contemporaries. 
At least fifteen extant portraits have been identified 
on good authority — ten paintings, three miniatures 
(two by Peter Oliver and one by Isaac Oliver), and 
two contemporary prints. 1 Most of these, it is true, 

1 Two portraits, representing the earl in early manhood, are at Wel- 
beck Abbey, and are described above. Of the remaining eight paintings, 
two are assigned to Van Somer, and represent the earl in early middle 
age ; one, a half-length, a charming picture, belonged to the late 
Sir James Knowles, of Queen Anne's Lodge ; the other, a full-length 
in drab doublet and hose, is in the Shakespeare Memorial Gallery at 
Stratford -on-Avon. Mireveldt thrice painted the earl at a later period 
of his career ; the pictures are now respectively at Woburn Abbey (the 
property of the Duke of Bedford), at Althorpe, and at the National 
Portrait Gallery. A fifth picture, assigned to Mytens, belongs to Viscount 
Powerscourt ; a sixth, by an unknown artist, belongs to Mr. Wingfield 
Digby, and the seventh (in armour) is in the Master's Lodge at St. John's 
College, Cambridge, where Southampton was educated. The miniature 
by Isaac Oliver, which also represents Southampton in late life, was 
formerly in Dr. Lumsden Propert's collection. It now belongs to a 
collector at Hamburg. The two miniatures assigned to Peter Oliver 
belong respectively to Mr. Jeffery Whitehead and Sir Francis Cook, Bart. 
(Cf. Catalogue of Exhibition of Portrait Miniatures at the Burlington 
Fine Arts Club, London, 1889, pp. 32, 71, 100.) In all the best preserved 
of these portraits the eyes are blue and the hair a dark shade of auburn. 
Among the middle-life portraits Southampton appears to best advantage 
in the one by Van Somer, which belonged to Sir James Knowles. 




ai^ri'iJrpuiiUCflA.i 



'^Xeizn^WHatAc&feM^.tfur? (Dart erf CJo-ubhamfitcix 
i a-umiaa^ man, from -tKe ari^nal jiidurc at '^O^l/'eck „^//W. • 



PATRONAGE OF THE EARL OF SOUTHAMPTOlSr 1 49 

portray their subject in middle age, when the roses 
of youth had faded, and they contribute nothing to 
the present argument. But the two portraits that are 
now at Welbeck, the property of the Duke of Port- 
land, give all the information that can be desired of 
Southampton's aspect ' in his youthful morn.' ^ One 
of these pictures represents the Earl at twenty-one, and 
the other at twenty-five or twenty-six. The earlier 
portrait, which is reproduced on the opposite page, 
shows a young man resplendently attired. His doublet 
is of white satin ; a broad collar, edged with lace, half 
covers a pointed gorget of red leather, embroidered 
with silver thread; the white trunks and knee-breeches 
are laced with gold ; the sword-belt, embroidered in 
red and gold, is decorated at intervals with white silk 
bows ; the hilt of the rapier is overlaid with gold ; 
purple garters, embroidered in silver thread, fasten the 
white stockings below the knee. Light body armour, 
richly damascened, lies on the ground to the right of 
the figure ; and a white-plumed helmet stands to the 
left on a table covered with a cloth of purple velvet 
embroidered in gold. Such gorgeous raiment suggests 
that its wearer bestowed much attention on his per- 
sonal equipment. But the head is more interesting 
than the body. The eyes are blue, the cheeks pink, 
the complexion clear, and the expression sedate ; 
rings are in the ears ; beard and moustache are at an 
incipient stage, and are of the same bright auburn 
hue as the hair in a picture of Southampton's mother 

^ I describe these pictures from a personal inspection of them which 
the Duke kindly permitted me to make. 



150 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

that is also at Welbeck.i But, however scanty is the 
down on the youth's cheek, the hair on his head is 
luxuriant. It is worn very long, and falls over and 
below the shoulder. The colour is now of walnut, 
but was originally of lighter tint 

The portrait depicting Southampton five or six 
years later shows him in prison, to which he was 
committed after his secret marriage in 1598. A cat 
and a book in a jewelled binding are on a desk at 
his right hand. Here the hair falls over both his 
shoulders in even greater profusion, and is distinctly 
blonde. The beard and thin upturned moustache 
are of brighter auburn and fuller than before, 
although still slight. The blue eyes and colouring 
of the cheeks show signs of ill health, but differ little 
from those features in the earlier portrait. 

From either of the two Welbeck portraits of 
Southampton might Shakespeare have drawn his 
picture of the youth in the * Sonnets.' Many times 
does he tell us that the youth is fair in complexion, 
and that his eyes are fair. In Sonnet Ixviii, when 
he points to the youth's face as a map of what beauty 
was 'without all ornament, itself and true' — before 
fashion sanctioned the use of artificial * golden tresses ' 
— there can be little doubt that he had in mind the 
wealth of locks that fell about Southampton's neck.^ 

1 Cf. Shakespeare's Sonnet iii : 

Thou art thy mother's glass, and she in thee 
Calls back the lovely April of her prime. 

2 Southampton's singularly long hair procured him at times un- 
welcome attentions. When, in January 1598, he struck Ambrose 
Willoughby, an esquire of the body, for asking him to break off, 



PATRONAGE OF THE EARL OF SOUTHAMPTON 151 

A few only of the sonnets that Shakespeare ad- 
dressed to the youth can be allotted to a date sub- 
sequent to 1 594 ; only two bear on the surface signs 
of a later composition. In Sonnet Ixx the poet no 
longer credits his hero with juvenile wantonness, 
but with a * pure, unstained prime,' which has 'passed 
Sonnet by the ambush of young days.' Sonnet 
last'of ttie ^^^^' apparently the last of the series, was 
series. penned almost a decade after the mass of 
its companions, for it makes references that cannot 
be mistaken to three events that took place in 1603 — to 
Queen Elizabeth's death, to the accession of James I, 
and to the release of the Earl of Southampton, who 
had been in prison since he was convicted in 1601 
of complicity in the rebellion of the Earl of Essex. 
The first two events are thus described : 

The mortal moon hath her ecHpse endured 
And the sad augurs mock their own presage; 
Incertainties now crown themselves assured 
And peace proclaims olives of endless age. 

It is in almost identical phrase that every pen in 

the spring of 1603 was felicitating the nation on 

the unexpected turn of events, by which 

Allusion to ^ ^ -' 

Elizabeth's Elizabeth s crown had passed, without 

civil war, to the Scottish King, and thus the 

revolution that had been foretold as the inevitable 

owing to the lateness of the hour, a game of primero that he was 
playing in the royal chamber^ at Whitehall, the esquire Willoughby 
is stated to have retaliated by ' pulling off some of the Earl's 
locks.' On the incident being reported to the Queen, she 'gave 
Willoughby, in the presence, thanks for what he did ' {^Sydney Papers^ 
ii. 83). 



152 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

consequence of Elizabeth's demise was happily averted. 
Cynthia {i.e. the moon) was the Queen's recognised 
poetic appellation. It is thus that she figures in 
the verse of Barnfield, Spenser, Fulke Greville, and 
Ralegh, and her elegists involuntarily followed the 
same fashion. * Fair Cynthia's dead ' sang one. 

Luna's extinct; and now beholde the sunne 
Whose beames soake up the moysture of all teares, 

wrote Henry Petowe in his ' A Fewe Aprill Drops 
Showered on the Hearse of Dead Eliza,' 1603. 
There was hardly a verse-writer who mourned her loss 
that did not typify it, moreover, as the eclipse of a 
heavenly body. One poet asserted that death * veiled 
her glory in a cloud of night' Another argued : 
* Naught can eclipse her light, but that her star will 
shine in darkest night.' A third varied the formula 
thus: 

When winter had cast off her weed 
Our sun eclipsed did set. Oh ! light most fair.^ 

At the same time James was constantly said to have 
entered on his inheritance ' not with an olive branch 
in his hand, but with a whole forest of olives round 
about him, for he brought not peace to this kingdom 
alone ' but to all Europe. ^ 

* The drops of^this most balmy time,' in this same 
sonnet, cvii, is an echo of another current strain of 
fancy. James came to England in a springtide of 
rarely rivalled clemency, which was reckoned of the 

1 These quotations are from Sorrozves Joy, a collection of elegies 
on Queen Elizabeth by Cambridge writers (Cambridge, 1603), and 
from Chettle's England'' s Alotirning Garment (London, 1603). 

- Gervase Markham's Honour in her Perfection, 1624. 



PATRONAGE OF THE EARL OF SOUTHAMPTON 1 53 

happiest augury. ' All things look fresh,' one poet 
sang, ' to greet his excellence.' ' The air, the seasons, 
.„ . , and the earth' were represented as in sym- 

Allusions to r J 

Southamp- pathy with the general joy in * this sweetest 
lease from of all swcet Springs.' One source of grief 
prison. alone was acknowledged : Southampton was 
still a prisoner in the Tower, ' supposed as forfeit 
to a confined doom.' All men, wrote Manningham, 
the diarist, on the day following the Queen's death, 
wished him at liberty. 1 The wish was fulfilled quickly. 
On April 10, 1603, his prison gates were opened by 
* a warrant from the king.' So bountiful a beginning 
of the new era, wrote John Chamberlain to Dudley 
Carleton two days later, ' raised all men's spirits 
. . . and the very poets with their idle pamphlets 
promised themselves ' great things.^ Samuel Daniel 
and John Davies celebrated Southampton's release 
in buoyant verse.^ It is improbable that Shake- 
speare remained silent. 'My love looks fresh,' he 
wrote in the concluding lines of Sonnet cvii, and 
he repeated the conventional promise that he had 
so often made before, that his friend should live in 
his ' poor rhyme,' 'when tyrants' crests and tombs of 
brass are spent.' It is impossible to resist the in- 
ference that Shakespeare thus saluted his patron on 
the close of his days of tribulation. Shakespeare's 
genius had then won for him a public reputation that 
rendered him independent of any private patron's 

1 Manningham's Diary, Camden Soc, p. 148. 
"^ Court and Times of James I, I. i. 7. 
^ See Appendix iv. 



154 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

favour, and he made no further reference in his 
writings to the patronage that Southampton had 
extended to him in earlier years. But the terms in 
which he greeted his former protector for the last 
time in verse justify the belief that, during his 
remaining thirteen years of life, the poet cultivated 
friendly relations with the Earl of Southampton, and 
was mindful to the last of the encouragement that 
the young peer offered him while he was still on the 
threshold of the temple of fame. 



STORY OF INTRIGUE IN THE SONNETS 1 55 



X 

THE SUPPOSED STORY OF INTRIGUE IN THE 

SONNETS 

It is hardly possible to doubt that had Shake- 
speare, who was more prolific in invention than any 
other poet, poured out in his sonnets his personal 
passions and emotions, he would have been carried 
by his imagination, at every stage, far beyond the 
beaten tracks of the conventional sonnetteers of his 
day. The imitative element in his sonnets is large 
enough to refute the assertion that in them as a 
whole he sought to 'unlock his heart' It is likely 
enough that beneath all the conventional adulation 
bestowed by Shakespeare on Southampton there 
lay a genuine affection, but his sonnets to the Earl 
were no involuntary ebullitions of a devoted and 
disinterested friendship ; they were celebrations of a 
patron's favour in the terminology — often raised by 
Shakespeare's genius to the loftiest heights of poetry 
— that was invariably consecrated to such a purpose 
by a current literary convention. Very few of 
Shakespeare's * sugared sonnets ' have a substantial 
right to be regarded as untutored cries of the soul. 
It is true that the sonnets in which the writer re- 
proaches himself with sin, or gives expression to a 



156 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

sense of melancholy, offer at times a convincing 
illusion of autobiographic confessions ; and it is 
just possible that they stand apart from the rest, 
and reveal the writer's inner consciousness, in which 
case they are not to be matched in any other of 
Shakespeare's literary compositions. But they may 
be, on the other hand, merely literary medita- 
tions, conceived by the greatest of dramatists, on 
infirmities incident to all human nature, and only 
attempted after the cue had been given by rival 
sonnetteers. At any rate, their energetic lines are 
often adapted from the less forcible and less coherent 
utterances of contemporary poets, and the themes 
are common to almost all Elizabethan collections of 
sonnets.^ Shakespeare's noble sonnet on the ravages 
of lust (cxxix), for example, treats with marvellous 
force and insight a stereotyped theme of sonnetteers, 

1 The fine exordium of Sonnet cxix : 

What potions have I drunk of Siren tears, 
Distill'd from limbecks foul as hell within, 

adopts expressions in Barnes's vituperative sonnet (No. xlix), where, 
after denouncing his mistress as a ' siren,' the poet incoherently ejacu- 
lates : 

From my love's limbeck [sc. have I] still [dijstilled tears ! 

Almost every note in the scale of sadness or self-reproach is sounded 
from time to time in Petrarch's sonnets. Tasso in Scelta delle Rime, 
1582, pt. ii. p. 26, has a sonnet (beginning ' Vinca fortuna homai, se 
sottoilpeso') M'hich adumbrates Shakespeare's Sonnets xxix ('When in 
disgrace with fortune and men's eyes') and Ixvi ('Tired with all these, 
for restful death I cry'). Drummond of Hawthornden translated 
Tasso's sonnet in his sonnet (pt. i. No. xxxiii) ; while Drummond's 
Sonnets xxv (' What cruel star into this world was brought ') and 
xxxii ('If crost with all mishaps be my poor life ') are pitched in the 
identical key. 



STORY OF INTRIGUE IN THE SONNETS 1 57 

and it may have owed its whole existence to Sir 
PhiHp Sidney's sonnet on ' Desire.' ^ 

Only in one group, composed of six sonnets scat- 
tered through the collection, is there traceable a 
strand of wholly original sentiment, not to be readily 
defined and boldly projecting from the web into 
which it is wrought. This series of six sonnets deals 
with a love adventure of no normal type. Sonnet 
cxliv opens with the lines : 

Two loves I have of comfort and despair 

Which like two angels do suggest (z.e. tempt) me still : . 

The better angel is a man right fair, 

The worser spirit a woman colour' d ill. ^ 

The woman, the sonnetteer continues, has corrupted 
the man and has drawn him from his *side.' Five 
The other sonnets treat the same theme. In 

relations three addressed to the man (xl, xli, and 
^oet's^^ xlii) the poet mildly reproaches his youthful 
mistress. friend for having sought and won the favours 
of a woman whom he himself loved ' dearly,' but the 
trespass is forgiven on accountof the friend's youth and 

1 Sidney's Certain Sonnets (No. xiii) appended to Astrophel and 
Stella in the edition of 1598. In Emaricdulfe : Sonnets written by 
E. C, 1595, Sonnet xxxvii, beginning 'O lust, of sacred love the foul 
corrupter,' even more closely resembles Shakespeare's sonnet in both 
phraseology and sentiment. E. C.'s rare volume is reprinted in the 
Lamport 6'(3:r/a;z(/ (Roxburghe Club), 1881. 

2 Even this sonnet is adapted from Drayton. See Sonnet xxii in 
1599 edition: 

An evil spirit your beauty haunts me still . . . 

Thus am I still provoked to every evil 

By this good-wicked spirit, sweet Angel-Devil. 

But Shakespeare entirely alters the point of the lines by contrasting the 
influence exerted on him by the woman with that exerted on him by a 
man. 



I 58 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

beauty. In the two remaining sonnets Shakespeare 
addresses the woman (cxxxiii and cxxxiv), and he 
rebukes her for having enslaved not only himself 
but his ' next self ' — his friend. Shakespeare, in his 
denunciation elsewhere of a mistress's disdain of his 
advances, assigns her blindness, like all the profes- 
sional sonnetteers, to no better defined cause than 
the perversity and depravity of womankind. In these 
six sonnets alone does he categorically assign his 
mistress's alienation to the fascinations of a dear friend 
or hint at such a cause for his mistress's infidelity. 
The definite element of intrigue that is developed here 
is not found anywhere else in the range of Elizabethan 
sonnet- literature. The character of the innovation 
and its treatment seem only capable of explanation by 
regarding the topic as a reflection of Shakespeare's 
personal experience. But how far he is sincere in his 
accounts of his sorrow in yielding his mistress to his 
friend in order to retain the friendship of the latter 
must be decided by each reader for himself. If all the 
words be taken literally, there is disclosed an act of self- 
sacrifice that it is difficult to parallel or explain. But it 
remains very doubtful if the affair does not rightly be- 
long to the annals of gallantry. The sonnetteer's com- 
placent condonation of the young man's offence chiefly 
suggests the deference that was essential to the main- 
tenance by a dependent of peaceful relations with a 
self-willed and self-indulgent patron. Southampton's 
sportive and lascivious temperament might easily impel 
him to divert to himself the attention of an attractive 
woman by whom he saw that his poet was fascinated, 



STORY OF INTRIGUE IN THE SONNETS 1 59 

and he was unlikely to tolerate any outspoken protest 
on the part of his, protege. There is no clue to the lady's 
identity, and speculation on the topic is useless. She 
may have given Shakespeare hints for his pictures of 
the * dark lady,' but he treats that lady's obduracy 
conventionally, and his vituperation of her sheds no 
light on the personal history of the mistress who left 
him for his friend. 

The emotions roused in Shakespeare by the episode, 
even if potent at the moment, were not likely to be 
deep-seated or enduring. And it is possible that a half- 
jesting reference, which would deprive Shakespeare's 
amorous adventure of serious import, was made to it 
by a literary comrade in a poem that was licensed for 
publication on September 3, 1594, and was published 
•Wiiiobie immediately under the title of ' Willobie his 
hisAvisa.' Avisa, or the True Picture of a Modest 
Maid and of a Chaste and Constant Wife.' 1 In this 
volume, which mainly consists of seventy-two cantos 
in varying numbers of six-line stanzas, the chaste 
heroine, Avisa, holds converse — in the opening sec- 
tion as a maid, and in the later section as a wife — 
with a series of passionate adorers. In every case 
she firmly repulses their advances. Midway through 
the book its alleged author — Henry Willobie — is 
introduced in his own person as an ardent admirer, 
and the last twenty-nine of the cantos rehearse his 
woes and Avisa's obduracy. To this section there is 

^ The work was reprinted by Dr. Grosart in his Occasional Issues 
1880, and extracts from it appear in the New Shakspere Society's 
Allusion Booksy i. 169 seq. 



l60 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

prefixed an argument in prose (canto xliv). It is there 
stated that Willobie, ' being suddenly affected with the 
contagion of a fantastical wit at the first sight of Avisa, 
pineth a while in secret grief. At length, not able any 
longer to endure the burning heat of so fervent a 
humour, [he] bewrayeth the secrecy of his disease unto 
his familiar friend W. S., who not long before had tried 
the courtesy of the like passion and was now newly re- 
covered of the like infection. Yet [W. S.], finding his 
friend let blood in the same vein, took pleasure for a 
time to see him bleed, and instead of stopping the issue, 
he enlargeth the wound with the sharp razor of willing 
conceit/ encouraging Willobie to believe that Avisa 
would utimately yield ' with pains, diligence, and some 
cost in time.' ' The miserable comforter ' [W. S.], the 
passage continues, was moved to comfort his friend 
* with an impossibility,' for one of two reasons. Either 
he * now would secretly laugh at his friend's folly * 
because he ' had given occasion not long before unto 
others to laugh at his own.' Or ' he would see whether 
another could play his part better than himself, and, 
in viewing after the course of this loving comedy,' 
would ' see whether it would sort to a happier end 
for this new actor than it did for the old player. But 
at length this comedy was like to have grown to 
a tragedy by the weak and feeble estate that H. W. 
• was brought unto,' owing to Avisa's unflinching 
rectitude. Happily, ' time and necessity ' effected a 
cure. In two succeeding cantos in verse W. S. is in- 
troduced in dialogue with Willobie, and he gives him, 
in oratio recta, light-hearted and mocking counsel 



STORY OF INTRIGUE IN THE SONNETS l6l 

which Willobie accepts with results disastrous to his 
mental health. 

Identity of initials, on which the theory of Shake- 
speare's identity with H. W.'s unfeeling adviser mainly 
rests, is not a strong foundation,^ and doubt is justi- 
fiable as to whether the story of ' Avisa' and her lovers 
is not fictitious. In a preface signed Hadrian Dorell, 
the writer, after mentioning that the alleged author 
(Willobie) was dead, discusses somewhat enigmati- 
cally whether or no the work is * a poetical fiction.' In 
a new edition of 1596 the same editor decides the ques- 
tion in the affirmative. But Dorell, while making this 
admission, leaves untouched the curious episode of 
' W. S.' The mention of ' W. S.' as 'the old player,' and 
the employment of theatrical imagery in discussing 
his relations with Willobie, must be coupled with the 
fact that Shakespeare, at a date when mentions of 
him in print were rare, was eulogised by name as the 
author of ' Lucrece ' in some prefatory verses to the 
volume. From such considerations the theory of 
* W. S.'s' identity with Willobie's acquaintance ac- 
quires substance. If we assume that it was Shake- 
speare who took a roguish delight in watching his 
friend Willobie suffer the disdain of ' chaste Avisa ' 
because he had ' newly recovered ' from the effects of 

1 W. S. are common initials,, and at least two authors bearing them 
made some reputation in Shakespeare's day. There was a dramatist 
named Wentworth Smith (see p. iS6n. i infra), a.nd there was a William 
Smith who published a volume of lovelorn sonnets called CJiloris in 
1595. A specious argument might possibly be devised in favour of 
the latter's identity with Willobie's counsellor. But Shakespeare, of 
the two, has the better claim. 

> M 



1 62 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

a like experience, it is clear that the theft of Shake- 
speare's mistress by another friend did not cause him 
deep or lasting distress. The allusions that were 
presumably made to the episode by the author of 
'Avisa' bring it, in fact, nearer the confines of comedy 
than of tragedy. 

The processes of construction which are discernible 
in Shakespeare's ' Sonnets ' are thus seen to be identical 
Summary with those that are discernible in the rest of his 
elusions literary work. They present one more proof 
the^'^Son-^ of his punctilious regard for the demands 
nets.' of public tastc, and of his marvellous genius 

and skill in adapting and transmuting for his own 
purposes the labours of other workers in the field that 
for the moment engaged his attention. Most of 
Shakespeare's * Sonnets ' were produced in 1594 under 
the incitement of that freakish rage for sonnetteering 
which, taking its rise in Italy and sweeping over FrancQ 
on its way to England, absorbed for some half-dozen 
years in this country a greater volume of literary energy 
than has been applied to sonnetteering within the 
same space of time here or elsewhere before or since. 
The thousands of sonnets that were circulated in Eng- 
land between 1591 and 1597 were of every literary 
quality, from sublimity to inanity, and they illustrated 
in form and topic every known phase of sonnetteering 
activity. Shakespeare's collection, which was put to- 
gether at haphazard and published surreptitiously many 
years after the poems were written, was a medley, at 
times reaching heights of literary excellence that none 



STORY OF INTRIGUE IN THE SONNETS 1 63 

Other scaled, hut as a whole reflecting the varied features 
of the sonnetteering vogue. Apostrophes to meta- 
physical abstractions, vivid picturings of the beauties 
of nature, adulation of a patron, idealisation of a 
protege's regard for a nobleman in the figurative lan- 
guage of amorous passion, amiable compliments on a 
woman's hair or touch on the virginals, and vehement 
denunciation of the falseness and frailty of womankind 
— all appear as frequently in contemporary collections 
of sonnets as in Shakespeare's. He borrows very many 
of his competitors' words and thoughts, but he so fused 
them with his fancy as often to transfigure them. 
Genuine emotion or the writer's personal experience 
very rarely inspired the Elizabethan sonnet, and Shake- 
speare's * Sonnets ' proved no exception to the rule. A 
personal note may have escaped him involuntarily in 
the sonnets in which he gives voice to a sense of melan- 
choly and self -remorse, but his dramatic instinct never 
slept, and there is no proof that he is doing more in 
those sonnets than produce dramatically the illusion of 
a personal confession. Only in one scattered series of 
six sonnets, where he introduced a topic, unknown to 
other sonnetteerSjOf a lover's supersession by his friend 
in a mistress's graces, does he seem to show indepen- 
dence of his comrades and draw directly on an incident 
in his own life, but even there the emotion is wanting 
in seriousness. The sole biographical inference dedu- 
cible from the * Sonnets ' is that at one time in his career 
Shakespeare disdained no weapon of flattery in an 
endeavour to monopolise the bountiful patronage of a 
young man of rank. External evidence agrees with 



1 64 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

internal evidence in identifying the belauded patron 
with the Earl of Southampton, and the real value to a 
biographer of Shakespeare's 'Sonnets' is the corrobora- 
tion they offer of the ancient tradition that the Earl of 
Southampton, to whom his two narrative poems were 
openly dedicated, gave Shakespeare at an early period 
of his literary career help and encouragement, which 
entitles the earl to a place in the poet's biography 
resembling that filled by the Duke Alfonso d'Este in 
the biography of Ariosto, or like that filled by Margaret, 
duchess of Savoy, in the biography of Ronsard. 



THE DEVELOPMENT OF DRAMATIC POWER 165 



XI • 

THE DEVELOPMENT OF DRAMATIC POWER 

But, all the while that Shakespeare was fancifully 
assuring his patron 

[How] to no other pass my verses tend 
Than of your graces and your gifts to tell, 

his dramatic work was steadily advancing. To the 
•Mid- winter season of 1595 probably belongs 

^^^^^l ' Midsummer Night's Dream.' 1 The comedy 
Dream.' may well have been written to celebrate a 
marriage — perhaps the marriage of the universal 

1 No edition appeared before 1600, and then two were published. 
It is probable that, as in the case of the Merchant of Venice, of which 
two editions appeared in the same year (1600), both quartos of the 
Dream came from the press of James Roberts, the printer and 
publisher of ' the players' bills.' But Roberts does not seem to have 
played the foremost part in the transaction. On October 8, 1600, 
Thomas Fisher, formerly a draper, who had only become a freeman of 
the Stationers' Company in the previous June, and remained for a very 
few years a bookseller and publisher (never possessing a printing press 
of his own), obtained a license for the publication of the Dream (Arber, 
iii. 174). The name of Fisher, the publisher, figured alone on the title- 
page of the first quarto of 1600; no printer was mentioned. Fisher's 
name was absent from the title-page of the second quarto, which was 
merely described as printed *by James Roberts.' The publisher, 
Fisher, had apparently resigned his interest in the book to Roberts, the 
printer of the first quarto. Of the second quarto Roberts acted as 
publisher as well as printer. His quarto, which corrects some mis- 
prints in the first version, was reprinted in the First Folio. 



1 66 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

patroness of poets, Lucy Harington, to Edward Rus- 
sell, third earl of Bedford, on December 12, 1594; 
or that of William Stanley, sixth earl of Derby, 
at Greenwich on January 24, 1594-5. The elaborate 
compliment to the Queen, ' a fair vestal throned by 
the west' (11. i. 157 seq.), was at once an acknowledg- 
ment of past marks of royal favour and an invitation 
for their extension to the future. Oberon's fanciful 
description (11. ii. 148-68) of the spot where he saw 
the little western flower called ' Love-in-idleness 1 that 
he bids Puck fetch for him, has been interpreted as 
a reminiscence of one of the scenic pageants with 
which the Earl of Leicester entertained Queen 
Elizabeth on her visit to Kenil worth in 1575.^ The 
whole play is in the airiest and most graceful vein 
of comedy. Hints for the story can be traced to a 
variety of sources — to Chaucer's ' Knight's Tale,' to 
Plutarch's ' Life of Theseus,' to Ovid's 'Metamor- 
phoses ' (bk. iv), and to the story of Oberon, the 
fairy-king, in the French mediaeval romance of 'Huon 
of Bordeaux,' of which an English translation by 
Lord Berners was first printed in 1534. The influ- 
ence of John Lyly is perceptible in the raillery in 
which both mortals and immortals indulge. In the 
humorous presentation of the play of ' Pyramus and 
Thisbe ' by the * rude mechanicals ' of Athens, Shake- 
speare improved upon a theme which he had already 
employed in 'Love's Labour's Lost.' But the final 

^ Oberon's Vision, by the Rev. W. J. Halpin (Shakespeare Society), 
1843. Two accounts of the Kenil worth fetes, by George Gascoigne 
and Robert Laneham respectively, were published in 1576. 



THE DEVELOPMENT OF DRAMATIC POWER 1 67 

scheme of the ' Midsummer Night's Dream ' is of the 
author's freshest invention, and by endowing — practi- 
cally for the first time in literature — the phantoms of 
the fairy world with a genuine and a sustained 
dramatic interest, Shakespeare may be said to have 
conquered a new realm for art. 

More sombre topics engaged him in the comedy 
of ' All's Well that Ends Well,' which may be tenta- 
' All's tively assigned to 1595. Meres, writing 

Well.' three years later, attributed to Shakespeare 
a piece called 'Love's Labour's Won.' This title, 
which is not otherwise known, may well be applied 
to 'All's Well' 'The Taming of The Shrew,' which 
has also been identified with * Love's Labour's Won,' 
has far slighter claim to the designation. The plot 
of 'All's Well,' like that of ' Romeo and Juliet,' was 
drawn from Painter's ' Palace of Pleasure ' (No. 
xxxviii). The original source is Boccaccio's ' Deca- 
merone' (giorn. iii. nov. 9). Shakespeare, after his 
wont, grafted on the touching story of Helena's love 
for the unworthy Bertram the comic characters of the 
braggart Parolles, the pompous Lafeu, and a clown 
(Lavache) less witty than his compeers. Another 
original creation, Bertram's mother, Countess of 
Roussillon, is a charming portrait of old age. In 
frequency of rhyme and other metrical characteristics 
the piece closely resembles 'The Two Gentlemen,' 
but the characterisation betrays far greater power, 
and there are fewer conceits or crudities of style. 
The pathetic element predominates. The heroine 
Helena, whose ' pangs of despised love ' are expressed 



1 68 ' WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

with touching tenderness, ranks, in spite of her ultimate 
defiance of the dictates of maidenly modesty, with the 
greatest of Shakespeare's female creations. 

'The Taming of The Shrew' — which, like * All's 
Well,' was first printed in the folio — was probably 
composed soon after the completion of that solemn 
comedy. It is a revision of an old play on lines 
somewhat differing from those which Shakespeare 
had followed previously. From * The 

' Taming ^ •' 

ofThe^ Taming of A Shrew,' a comedy first pub- 
lished in 1594,-^ Shakespeare drew the In- 
duction and the scenes in which the hero Petruchio 
conquers Catherine the Shrew. He first infused into 
them the genuine spirit of comedy. But while follow- 
ing the old play in its general outlines, Shakespeare's 
revised version added an entirely new underplot — 
the story of Bianca and her lovers, which owes 
something to the ' Supposes ' of George Gascoigne, 
an adaptation of Ariosto's comedy called ' I Sup- 
positi.' Evidence of style — the liberal introduction 
of tags of Latin and the beat of the doggerel — makes 
it difficult to allot the Bianca scenes to Shakespeare ; 
those scenes were probably due to a coadjutor. 

The Induction to ' The Taming of The Shrew ' has 
a direct bearing on Shakespeare's biography, for the 
poet admits into it a number of literal references to 
Stratford and his native county. Such personalities are 
rare in Shakespeare's plays, and can only be paralleled 
in two of slightly later date — the ' Second Part 

^ Reprinted by the Shakespeare Society in 1844. 



THE DEVELOPMENT OF DRAMATIC POWER 1 69 

of Henry IV' and the 'Merry Wives of Windsor.' 
All these local allusions may well be attributed to 
such a renewal of Shakespeare's personal relations 
Stratford with the town, as is indicated by external 
fn^he^"^ facts in his history of the same period. 
Induction. In the Induction the tinker, Christopher 
Sly, describes himself as ' Old Sly's son of Burton 
Heath.' Burton Heath is Barton-on-the-Heath, 
the home of Shakespeare's aunt, Edmund Lambert's 
wife, and of her sons. The tinker in like vein 
confesses that he has run up a score with Marian 
Hacket, the fat alewife of Wincot.^ The references 
to Wincot and the Hackets are singularly precise. 
The name of the maid of the inn is given as Cicely 
Hacket, and the alehouse is described in the stage 
direction as ' on a heath.' 

Wincot was the familiar designation of three 
small Warwickshire villages, and a good claim has 
been set up on behalf of each to be the scene of 
Sly's drunken exploits. There is a very small hamlet 
named Wincot within four miles of Stratford 
now consisting of a single farmhouse which 
was once an Elizabethan mansion ; it is situated 



1 All these details are of Shakespeare's invention, and do not figure 
in the old play. But in the crude induction in the old play the non- 
descript drunkard is named without prefix ' Slie.' That surname, 
although it was very common at Stratford and in the neighbourhood, 
was borne by residents in many other parts of the country, and its ap- 
pearance in the old play is not in itself, as has been suggested, sufficient 
to prove that the old play was written by a Warwickshire man. There 
are no other names or references in the old play that can be associated 
with Warwickshire. 



I/O WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

on what was doubtless in Shakespeare's day, before 
the land there was enclosed, an open heath. This 
Wincot forms part of the parish of Quinton, where, 
according to the parochial registers, a Racket family 
resided in Shakespeare's day. On November 21, 
1 591, ' Sara Racket, the daughter of Robert Racket,' 
was baptised in Quinton church. ^ Yet by Warwick- 
shire contemporaries the Wincot of the 'Taming of The 
Shrew ' was unhesitatingly identified with Wilnecote, 
near Tamworth, on the Staffordshire border of War- 
wickshire, at some distance from Stratford. That 
village, whose name was pronounced 'Wincot,' was 
celebrated for its ale in the seventeenth century, a 
distinction which is not shown by contemporary 
evidence to have belonged to any place of like name. 
The Warwickshire poet. Sir Aston Cokain, within 
half a century of the production of Shakespeare's 
' Taming of The Shrew,' addressed to ' Mr. Clement 
Fisher of Wincott ' (a well-known resident at Wilne- 
cote) verses which begin 

Shakspeare yovs ^zW^/ ale hath much renowned, 
That fox'd a Beggar so (by chance was found 
Sleeping) that there needed not many a word 
To make him to believe he was a Lord. 

In the succeeding lines the writer promises to visit 
' Wincot ' {i.e, Wilnecote) to drink. 

Such ale as Shakspeare fancies 
Did put Kit Sly into such lordly trances. 



1 Mr. Richard Savage, the secretary and librarian of the Birthplace 
Trustees at Stratford, has generously placed at my disposal this interest- 
ing fact, which he lately discovered. 



THE DEVELOPMENT OF DRAMATIC POWER l/l 

It is therefore probable that Shakespeare con- 
sciously invested the home of Kit Sly and of Kit's 
hostess with characteristics of Wilnecote as well as of 
the hamlet near Stratford. 

Wilmcote, the native place of Shakespeare's 
mother, is also said to have been popularly pronounced 
'Wincot' A tradition which was first recorded by 
Capell as late as 1780 in his notes to the 'Taming 
of The Shrew ' (p. 26) is to the effect that Shakespeare 
often visited an inn at 'Wincot' to enjoy the society 
of a 'fool who belonged to a neighbouring mill,' and 
the Wincot of this story is, we are told, locally asso- 
ciated with the village of Wilmcote. But the links 
that connect Shakespeare's tinker with Wilmcote are 
far slighter than those which connect him with Win- 
cot and Wilnecote. 

The mention of Kit Sly's tavern comrades — 

Stephen Sly and old John Naps of Greece, 
And Peter Turf and Henry Pimpernell — 

was in all likelihood a reminiscence of contemporary 
Warwickshire life as literal as the name of the 
hamlet where the drunkard dwelt. There was a 
genuine Stephen Sly who was in the dramatist's day 
a self-assertive citizen of Stratford ; and ' Greece,' 
whence 'old John Naps' derived his cognomen, is an 
obvious misreading of Greet, a hamlet by Winchcomb 
in Gloucestershire, not far removed from Shake- 
speare's native town.^ 

1 According to local tradition Shakespeare was acquainted 
with Greet, "Winchcomb, and all the villages in the immediate 



1/2 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

In 1597 Shakespeare turned once more to English 
history. From Holinshed's ' Chronicle,' and from a 
'Henry valuelcss but vcry popular piece, 'The 
^^' Famous Victories of Henry V,' which was 

repeatedly acted between 1588 and 1595,^ he worked 
up with splendid energy two plays on the reign of 
Henry IV. They form one continuous whole, but are 
known respectively as parts i and ii of ' Henry IV.' 
The ' Second Part of Henry IV ' is almost as 
rich as the Induction to 'The Taming of The 
Shrew ' in direct references to persons and districts 
familiar to Shakespeare. Two amusing scenes pass 
at the house of Justice Shallow in Gloucestershire, 
a county which touched the boundaries of Strat- 
ford (hi. ii and v. i). When, in the second of these 
scenes, the justice's factotum, Davy, asked his master 
' to countenance William Visor of Woncot ^ against 
Clement Perkes of the Hill,' the local references are 
unmistakable. Woodmancote, where the family of 
Visor or Vizard has flourished since the sixteenth 
century, is still pronounced Woncot. The adjoining 



neighbourhood. He is still credited with the authorship of the local 
jingle which enumerates the chief hamlets and points of interest in 
the district. The lines run : 

Dirty Gretton, dingy Greet, 
Beggarly Winchcomb, Sudely sweet; 
Hartshorn and Wittington Bell, 
Andoversford and Merry Frog Mill. 

1 It was licensed for publication in 1594, and published in 1598. 

^ The quarto of 1600 reads V^'^oncote: all the folios read Woncot. 
Yet Malone in the V^ariorum of 1803 introduced the new and un- 
warranted reading of Wincot, which has been unwisely adopted by 
succeeding editors. 



THE DEVELOPMENT OF DRAMATIC POWER 1 73 

Stinchcombe Hill (still familiarly known to natives as 
* The Hill ') was in the sixteenth century the home of 
the family of Perkes. Very precise too are the allu- 
sions to the region of the Cotswold Hills, which were 
easily accessible from Stratford. ' Will Squele, a 
Cotswold man,' is noticed as one of Shallow's friends 
in youth (in. ii. 23) ; and when Shallow's servant Davy 
receives his master's instructions to sow 'the head- 
land ' * with red wheat,' in the early autumn, there 
is an obvious reference to the custom almost peculiar 
to the Cotswolds of sowing ' red lammas ' wheat at 
an unusually early season of the agricultural year.^ 

The kingly hero of the two plays of 'Henry IV' 
had figured as a spirited young man in ' Richard H ' ; 
he was now represented as weighed down by care 
and age. With him are contrasted (in part i) his 
impetuous and ambitious subject Hotspur and (in 
both parts) his son and heir Prince Hal, whose 
boisterous disposition drives him from Court to seek 
adventures among the haunters of taverns. Hotspur 
is a vivid and fascinating portrait of a hot-headed 
soldier, courageous to the point of rashness, and 
sacrificing his life to his impetuous sense of honour. 
Prince Hal, despite his vagaries,' is endowed by the 
dramatist with far more self-control and common 
sense. 

On the first, as on every subsequent, production of 

1 These references are convincingly explained by Mr. Justice Madden 
in his Diary of Master Silence, pp. 87 seq., 372-4. Cf. Blunt's Dursley 
and its Neighbotirhood, Huntley's Glossary of the Cotswold Dialect^ oxid 
Marshall's Rural Economy of Cotswold (1796). 



174 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

' Henry IV ' the main public interest was concentrated 
neither on the King nor on his son, nor on Hotspur, 
but on the chief of Prince Hal's riotous companions. 
At the outset the propriety of that great creation 
was questioned on a political or historical ground of 
doubtful relevance. Shakespeare in both parts of 
* Henry IV ' originally named the chief of the prince's 
associates after Sir John Oldcastle, a character in the 
old play. But Henry Brooke, eighth Lord Cobham, 
who succeeded to the title early in 1597, ^^^ 
claimed descent from the historical Sir John Old- 
castle, the Lollard leader, raised objection; and 
when the first part of the play was published with 
the acting-company's authority in 1598,^ Shake- 
speare bestowed on Prince Hal's tun-bellied 

Falstaff. .^„ , , , , , 

follower the new and deathless name of 
Falstaff. A trustworthy edition of the second part 
of ' Henry IV ' also appeared with Falstaff's name 

1 Andrew Wise, the publisher in 1597 of J^uAard // and Richard 
III, obtained on February 25, 1597-8, a license for the publication of 
the historye of Henry iiif^ with his battaile of Shrezvsburye against 
Henry Hotspurre of the Northe zvith the conceipted mirthe of Sir John 
Falstaff (^AxhQX, iii. 105). This quarto, which bore no author's name, 
was printed for Wise by Peter Short at the Star on Bread Street Hill. 
A second edition * newly corrected by W. Shake-speare ' was printed for 
Wise by a different printer, Simon Stafford of Adling Hill, near Carter 
Lane, in 1599. Wise made over his interest in this First Part of Henry 
IV on June 25, 1603, to Matthew Lawe of St. Paul's Churchyard, who 
produced new editions in 1604, 1608, 1 613, and 1622. Meanwhile Wise 
had entered into partnership with another bookseller, William Aspley, 
of the Parrot in St. Paul's Churchyard in 1600, and Wise and Aspley 
jointly obtained on August 23, 1600, a license to publish both Much 
Ado about Nothing and the Second Parte of the history of Kinge Henry 
the iiif^ with the humours of Sir John Fallstaff, wrytten by Master 
Shakespere (Arber, iii. 170-1). This is the earliest mention of 



THE DEVELOPMENT OF DRAMATIC POWER 1 75 

substituted for that of Oldcastle in 1600. There 
the epilogue expressly denied that Falstaff had any 
characteristic in common with the martyr Oldcastle : 
' Oldcastle died a martyr, and this is not the man.' 
But the substitution of the name * Falstaff ' did not pass 
without protest. It hazily recalled Sir John Fastolf, an 
historical warrior of repute and wealth of the fifteenth 
century who had already figured in ' Henry VI,' and 
was owner at one time of the Boar's Head Tavern in 
Southwark.i An Oxford scholar. Dr. Richard James, 
writing about 1625, protested that Shakespeare, after 
offending Sir John Oldcastle's descendants by giving 
his ' buffoon ' the name of that resolute martyr, * was 
put to make an ignorant shift of abusing Sir John 
Fastolf, a man not inferior in vertue, though not so 
famous in piety as the other.' ^ George Daniel of 
Beswick, the Cavalier poet, similarly complained in 
1647 of the ill use to which Shakespeare had put 
Fastolf's name in order to escape the imputation of 
vilifying the Lollard leader.^ Fuller in his ' Worthies,' 
first published in 1662, while expressing satisfaction 
that Shakespeare had * put out ' of the play Sir John 
Oldcastle, was eloquent in his avowal of regret that 

Shakespeare's name in the Stationers' Register. In previous entries of 
his plays no author's name was given. The original edition of the Second 
Part of Henry /Fwas printed for Wise by Valentine Simmes (or Sims) 
in 1600. It reached a second edition before the close of the year. 

1 According to traditional stage directions, first adopted by Theo- 
bald in 1733, the Prince and his companions in i%^r}/ /F frequent 
the Boar's Head, Eastcheap. 

2 James MS. 34, Bodleian Library, Oxford ; cf. Halliwell, On the 
Character of Sir John Falstaff^ 184I5 ??• I9j 20. 

^ George Daniel's Poemsy ed. Grosart, 1878, pp. 1 12-13. 



l>je • WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

* Sir John Fastolf ' was ' put in,' on the ground that it 
was making overbold with a great warrior's memory 
to make him a 'Thrasonical puff and emblem of 
mock-valour.' 

The offending introduction and withdrawal of 
Oldcastle's name left a curious mark on literary 
history. Humbler dramatists (Munday, Wilson, 
Drayton, and Hathaway), seeking to profit by the 
attention drawn by Shakespeare to the historical 
Oldcastle, produced a poor dramatic version of Old- 
castle's genuine history. They pretended to vindicate 
the Lollard's memory from the slur that Shakespeare's 
identification of him with his fat knight had cast 
upon it.^ Nevertheless of two editions of * Sir 
John Oldcastle' pubHshed in 1600, one printed for 
T[homas] P[avier] was impudently described on the 
title-page as by Shakespeare. 

But it is not the historical traditions which are 
connected with Falstaff that give him his perennial 
attraction. It is the personality that owes nothing 
to history with which Shakespeare's imaginative 
power clothed him. The knight's unfettered indul- 
gence in sensual pleasures, his exuberant mendacity, 
and his love of his own ease are purged of offence by 
his colossal wit and jollity, while the contrast between 
his old age and his unreverend way of life supplies 
that tinge of melancholy which is inseparable from 

1 In the prologue to the play of Oldcastle (1600) appear the lines: 

It is no pampered glutton we present, 
Nor aged councellor to youthful sinne; 
But one whose vertue shone above the rest, 
A valiant martyr and a vertuous Peere. 



THE DEVELOPMENT OF DRAMATIC POWER 1 77 

the highest manifestations of humour. The Ehza- 
bethan public, despite the protests of historical critics, 
recognised the triumphant success of the effort, and 
many of Falstaff's telling phrases, with the names 
of his foils, Justice Shallow and Silence, at once 
took root in popular speech. Shakespeare's purely 
comic power culminated in Falstaff; he may be 
claimed as the most humorous figure in literature. 
In all probability ' The Merry Wives of Windsor,' 
a comedy inchning to farce, and unquahfied by 
any pathetic interest, followed close upon 
waives of * Henry IV.' In the epilogue to the ' Second 

Windsor.' _, rrr TTTJOii 1-1 

Fart 01 Henry IV Shakespeare had written : 
' If you be not too much cloyed with fat meat, our 
humble author will continue the story with Sir John 
in it . . . where for anything I know Falstaff shall die 
of a sweat, unless already a' be killed with your hard 
opinions.' Rowe asserts that * Queen Elizabeth was 
so well pleased with that admirable character of Fal- 
staff in the two parts of '' Henry IV " that she com- 
manded him to continue it for one play more, and to 
show him in love.' Dennis, in the dedication of 
'The Comical Gallant' (1702), noted that the 'Merry 
Wives ' was written at the Queen's ' command and by 
her direction ; and she was so eager to see it acted that 
she commanded it to be finished in fourteen days, and 
was afterwards, as tradition tells us, very well pleased 
with the representation.' In his 'Letters' (1721, 
p. 232) Dennis reduces the period of composition to 
ten days — ' a prodigious thing,' added Gildon,^ ' where 

1 Remarks, p. 291. 

N 



178 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

all is SO well contrived and carried on without the least 
confusion.' The localisation of the scene at Windsor, 
and the complimentary references to Windsor Castle, 
corroborate the tradition that the comedy was pre- 
pared to meet a royal command. A license for the 
publication of the play was granted by the Stationers' 
Company to John Busby of the Crane in St. Paul's 
Churchyard on January 18, 1601-2.^ An imperfect 
draft was printed in 1602 by Thomas Creede of 
Thames Street, and was published at the Fleur de 
Luce in St. Paul's Churchyard by Arthur Johnson, who 
took the venture over from Busby ;^ the folio of 1623 
first supplied a complete version of the ' Merry Wives.' 
The plot was probably suggested by an Italian novel. 
A tale from Straparola's ' Notti ' (iv. 4), of which an 
adaptation figured in the miscellany of novels called 
Tarleton's ' Newes out of Purgatorie ' (1590), another 
Italian tale from the ' Pecorone ' of Ser Giovanni 
Fiorentino (i. 2), and a third romance, the Fishwife's 
tale of Brainford in the collection of stories called 
* Westward for Smelts,' ^ supply incidents distantly 
resembling episodes in the play. Nowhere has Shake- 
speare so vividly reflected the bluff temper of contem- 

^ Arber, iii. 199. ' 

2 Cf. Shakespeare Society's reprint, 1842, ed. Halliwell. Johnson 
was not concerned in the publication of any other of Shakespeare's 
plays. He reissued his imperfect version of the Merry Wives in 
1619. 

^ This collection of stories is said by both Malone and Steevens 
to have been published in 1603, although no edition earlier than 1620 
is now known. The 1620 edition of Westivard for Smelts, written by 
Kinde Kit of Kingston, was reprinted by the Percy Society in 1848. 
Cf. Shakespeare's Library, ed. Hazlitt, i. ii. 1-80. 



THE DEVELOPMENT OF DRAMATIC POWER 1 79 

porary middle-class society. The presentment of the 
buoyant domestic life of an Elizabethan country town 
bears distinct impress of Shakespeare's own experi- 
ence. Again, there are literal references to the 
neighbourhood of Stratford. Justice Shallow, whose 
coat-of-arms is described as consisting of ' luces,' is 
thereby openly identified with Shakespeare's early 
foe. Sir Thomas Lucy of Charlecote. When Shake- 
speare makes Master Slender repeat the report that 
Master Page's fallow greyhound was ' outrun on Cot- 
sail ' (i. i. 93), he testifies to his interest in the coursing 
matches for which the Cotswold district was famed. 

The spirited character of Prince Hal was pecu- 
liarly congenial to its creator, and in * Henry V ' 
Shakespeare, during 1598, brought his ca- 
reer to its zenith. The play was performed 
early in 1599, probably in the newly built Globe 
Theatre. A very imperfect draft was published in 
1600 jointly by Thomas Millington of Cornhill and 
John Busby of St. Paul's Churchyard ; it was printed, 
as in the case of the imperfect draft of the * Merry 
Wives,' by Thomas Creede of Thames Street.^ This 

1 Millington had published the first edition of 'Titus' (1594) with 
Edward White, and was responsible for two editions of both The Con- 
tention (1594 and 1600) and Trzie Tragedie (1595 and 1600) — the 
first drafts respectively of Shakespeare's second and third parts of 
Henry VI. Busby, Millington's partner in Henry V, acquired on 
January 18, 1 601 -2, a license for the Merry Wives, only to part with 
it immediately to Arthur Johnson. In like fashion Busby and Milling- 
ton made over their interest in Henry V before August 14, 1600, to 
Thomas Pavier of Cornhill, a reckless pirate, who was responsible for 
the disreputable reissues of 1602 and 1608 (Arber, iii. 169). It was 
Pavier who published the plays of Sir John Oldcastle (1600) and the 



l80 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

inadequate edition of 'Henry V,' which was ordered by 
the Stationers' Company 'to be stayed' on August 4, 
1600, was twice reissued — in 1602 and 1608 — be- 
fore a complete version was supplied in the First 
Folio of 1623. The dramatic interest of 'Henry V 
is slender. There is abundance of comic element, 
but death has removed Falstaff, whose last moments 
are described with the simple pathos that comes of a 
matchless art, and, though Falstaff's companions sur- 
vive, they are thin shadows of his substantial figure. 
New comic characters are introduced in the persons 
of three soldiers respectively of Welsh, Scottish, and 
Irish nationality, whose racial traits are contrasted 
with telling effect. The irascible Irishman, Captain 
MacMorris, is the only representative of his nation 
who figures in the long list of Shakespeare's drama- 
tis personce. The scene in which the pedantic but 
patriotic Welshman, Fluellen, avenges the sneers of 
the braggart Pistol at his nation's emblem, by forc- 
ing him to eat the leek, overflows in vivacious humour. 
The piece in its main current, presents a series of 
loosely connected episodes in which the hero's man- 
liness is displayed as soldier, ruler, and lover. The 
topic reached its climax in the victory of the Eng- 
lish at Agincourt, which powerfully appealed to patri- 
otic sentiment. Besides the ' Famous Victories,' to 
which Shakespeare stood directly indebted, there was 
another lost piece on the subject, which Henslowe 
produced for the first time on November 28, 1595.^ 

Yorkshire Tragedy (1608) under the fraudulent pretence that Shake- 
speare was their author. 

1 Diaryiy p. 61 ; see p. 172. 



THE DEVELOPMENT OF DRAMATIC POWER l8l 

* Henry V may be regarded as Shakespeare's final 
experiment in the dramatisation of EngUsh history, 
and it artistically rounds off the series of his 'histories* 
which form collectively a kind of national epic. For 

* Henry VHI,' which was produced very late in his 
career, he was only in part responsible, and that 

* history ' consequently belongs to a different category. 

A glimpse of autobiography may be discerned in 
the direct mention by Shakespeare in ' Henry V ' of an 
exciting episode in current history. In the prologue 
to act V Shakespeare foretold for Robert Devereux, 
Essex second earl of Essex, the close friend of his 

r"bemon p^-trou Southampton, an enthusiastic re- 
of 1601. ception by the people of London when he 
should come home after 'broaching' rebellion in 
Ireland. 

Were now the general of our gracious empress, 
As in good time he may, from Ireland coming, 
Bringing rebellion broached on his sword, 
How many would the peaceful city quit 
To welcome him ! (Act v. Chorus, 11. 30-4.) 

Essex had set out on his disastrous mission as 
the would-be pacificator of Ireland on March 27, 1599. 
The fact that Southampton went with him probably 
accounts for Shakespeare's avowal of sympathy. 
But Essex's effort failed. He was charged, soon 
after * Henry V ' was produced, with treasonable 
neglect of duty, and he sought in 1601, again with the 
support of Southampton, to recover his position by 
stirring up rebellion in London. Then Shakespeare's 
reference to Essex's popularity with Londoners bore 
perilous fruit. The friends of the rebel leaders sought 



1 82 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

the dramatist's countenance. They paid 40^. to 
Augustine Phillips, a leading member of Shake- 
speare's company, to induce him to revive at the 
Globe Theatre 'Richard II' (beyond doubt Shake- 
speare's play), in the hope that its scene of the kill- 
ing of a king might encourage a popular outbreak. 
Phillips subsequently deposed that he prudently told 
the conspirators who bespoke the piece that ' that 
play of Kyng Richard ' was ' so old and so long out 
of use as that they should have small or no company 
at it.' None the less the performance took place on 
Saturday (February 7, 1601), the day preceding that 
fixed by Essex for the rising. The Queen, in a later 
conversation with William Lambarde (on August 4, 
1 601), complained that ' this tragedie ' of ' Richard II,' 
which she had always viewed with suspicion, was 
played at the period with seditious intent * forty times 
in open streets and houses.' ^ At the trial of Essex 
and his friends, Phillips gave evidence of the circum- 
stances under which the tragedy was revived at the 
Globe Theatre. Essex was executed, and South- 
ampton was imprisoned until the Queen's death. 
No proceedings were taken against the players,^ but 
Shakespeare wisely abstained, for the time, from any 
public reference to the fate either of Essex or of his 
patron Southampton. 

Such incidents served to accentuate Shakespeare's 

1 Nichols, Progresses of Elizabeth^ iii. 552. 

2 Cf. Domestic MSS. (Elizabeth) in Public Record Office, 
vol. cclxxviii. Nos. 78 and 85; and calendar of Domestic State 
Papers, 1598-1601, pp. 575-8. 



THE DEVELOPMENT OF DRAMATIC POWER 1 83 

growing reputation. For several years his genius as 
dramatist and poet had been acknowledged by critics 
Shake ^^^ playgocrs alike, and his social and pro- 
speare's fessional Dosition had become considerable. 

popularity 

and Inside the theatre his influence was supreme. 

When, in 1598, the manager of the company 
rejected Ben Jonson's first comedy — his 'Every Man 
in his Humour' — Shakespeare intervened, accord- 
ing to a credible tradition (reported by Rowe but 
denounced by Gifford), and procured a reversal of the 
decision in the interest of the unknown dramatist, 
who was his junior by nine years. He took a part 
when the piece was performed. Jonson was of a 
difficult and jealous temper, and subsequently he gave 
vent to an occasional expression of scorn at Shake- 
speare's expense, but, despite passing manifestations 
of his unconquerable surliness, there can be no doubt 
that Jonson cherished genuine esteem and affection 
for Shakespeare till death. ^ Within a very few years 
of Shakespeare's death Sir Nicholas L' Estrange, an 
industrious collector of anecdotes, put into writing an 
anecdote for which he made Dr. Donne responsible, 
attesting the amicable relations that habitually sub- 
sisted between Shakespeare and Jonson. ' Shake- 
peare,' ran the story, 'was godfather to one of Ben 
Jonson's children, and after the christening, being in 
a deep study, Jonson came to cheer him up and 
asked him why he was so melancholy. *' No, faith, 
Ben," says he, " not I, but I have been considering 

1 Cf. Gilchrist, Examitiation of the charges . . . of Jonson' s Enmity 
towards Shakspeare, 1808. 



184 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

a great while what should be the fittest gift for me to 
bestow upon my godchild, and I have resolv'd at 
last." " I pr'ythee, what ? " sayes he. " F faith, Ben, 
I'll e'en give him a dozen good Lattin spoons, and 
thou shalt translate them." ' ^ 

The creator of Falstaff could have been no 
stranger to tavern life, and he doubtless took part with 
zest in the convivialities of men of letters. Tradition 

reports that Shakespeare joined, at the 
Mermaid Mermaid Tavern in Bread Street, those 

meetings of Jonson and his associates which 
Beaumont described in his poetical 'Letter' to Jonson: 

, What things have we seen 

Done at the Mermaid? heard words that have been 
So nimble, and so full of subtle flame, 
As if that every one from whence they came 
Had meant to put his whole wit in a jest. 
And had resolved to live a fool the rest 
Of his dull life. 

* Many were the wit-combats,' wrote Fuller of 
Shakespeare in his 'Worthies' (1662), 'betwixt him 
and Ben Jonson, which two I behold like a Spanish 
great galleon and an English man of war; Master 
Jonson (like the former) was built far higher 
in learning, solid but slow in his performances. 
Shakespear, with the Englishman of war, lesser in 
bulk, but lighter in sailing, could turn with all tides, 

1 Latten is a mixed metal resembling brass. Pistol in Merry 
Wives of Windsor (i. i. 165) likens Slender to a 'latten bilbo,' that is, 
a sword made of the mixed metal. Cf. Anecdotes and Traditions, 
edited from L'Estrange's MSS. by W. J. Thorns for the Camden 
Society, p. 2. 



THE DEVELOPMENT OF DRAMATIC POWER 1 85 

tack about, and take advantage of all winds by the 
quickness of his wit and invention.' 

Of the many testimonies paid to Shakespeare's 
literary reputation at this period of his career, the 
Meres'seu- ^^^^ Striking was that of Francis Meres. 
logy. 1598. Meres was a learned graduate of Cambridge 
University, a divine and schoolmaster, who brought out 
in 1 598 a collection of apophthegms on morals, religion, 
and literature which he entitled ' Palladis Tamia.' In 
the book he interpolated *A comparative discourse of 
our English poets with the Greek, Latin, and Italian 
poets,' and there exhaustively surveyed contemporary 
literary effort in England. Shakespeare figured in 
Meres's pages as the greatest man of letters of the day. 
* The Muses would speak Shakespeare's fine filed 
phrase,' Meres asserted, ' if they could speak English.' 
'Among the English,' he declared, 'he was the most 
excellent in both kinds for the stage ' {i.e. tragedy and 
comedy). The titles of six comedies (' Two Gentle- 
men of Verona,' * Errors,' ' Love's Labour's Lost,' 
'Love's Labour's Won,' 'Midsummer Night's Dream,' 
and ' Merchant of Venice ') and of six tragedies 
('Richard II,' 'Richard III,' 'Henry IV,' 'King 
John,' 'Titus,' and 'Romeo and Juliet') were set 
forth, and mention followed of his ' Venus and Adonis,' 
his ' Lucrece,' and his ' sugred ^ sonnets among his 



1 This, or some synonym, is the conventional epithet apphed at the 
date to Shakespeare and his work. Weever credited such characters 
of Shakespeare as Tarquin, Romeo, and Richard III with ' sugred 
tongues' in his Epigra7ns of 1599. In the Return from Pamasstis 
(1601?) Shakespeare is apostrophised as 'sweet Master Shakespeare.' 



1 86 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

private friends.' These were cited as proof 'that the 
sweet witty soul of Ovid lives in mellifluous and 
honey-tongued Shakespeare.' In the same year a 
rival poet, Richard Barnfield, in * Poems in divers 
Humors,' predicted immortality for Shakespeare with 
no less confidence. 

And Shakespeare, thou whose honey-flowing vein 
(Pleasing the world) thy Praises doth obtain, 
Whose Venus and whose Lucrece (sweet and chaste) 
Thy name in Fame's immortal Book have placed, 
Live ever you, at least in fame live ever : — 

Well may the Body die, but Fame dies never. 

Shakespeare's name was thenceforth of value to 
unprincipled publishers, and they sought to palm off 
on their customers as his work the productions of 
inferior pens. As early as 1595, Thomas Creede, 
the surreptitious printer of ' Henry V ' and 
hisnameto the ' Mcrrv Wivcs,' had issued the crude 

publishers. ""^^ ., 

* Tragedie of Locrme, as newly set loorth, 
overseene and corrected. By W. S.' It appropriated 
many passages from an older piece called ' Selimus,' 
which was possibly by Greene and certainly came 
into being long before Shakespeare had written a line 
of blank verse. The same initials — ' W.S.'^ — figured 



Milton did homage to the tradition by writing of ' sweetest Shakespeare ' 
in Z' Allegro. 

1 A hack-writer, Wentworth Smith, took a hand in producing 
thirteen plays, none of which are extant, for the theatrical manager, 
Philip Henslowe, between 1601 and 1603. The Hector of Germanie, 
an extant play ' made by W. Smith ' and published ' with new additions ' 
in 161 5, was doubtless by Wentworth Smith, and is the only dramatic 
work by him that has survived. Neither internal nor external evidence 



THE DEVELOPMENT OF DRAMATIC POWER 1 8/ 

on the title-page of ' The True Chronicle Historie of 
Thomas, Lord Cromwell,' which was licensed on 
August II, 1602, was printed for William Jones in 
that year, and was reprinted verbatim by Thomas 
Snodham in 161 3. On the title-page of the comedy 
entitled 'The Puritaine, or the Widdow of Watling 
Streete,' which George Eld printed in 1607, *W. S.' 
was again stated to be the author. Shakespeare's full 
name appeared on the title-pages of * The Life of Old- 
castle ' in 1600 (printed for T[homas] P[avier]), of 
* The London Prodigall ' in 1605 (printed by T. C. for 
Nathaniel Butter), and of * The Yorkshire Tragedy ' 
in 1608 (by R. B. for Thomas Pavier). None of these 
six plays have any internal claim to Shakespeare's au- 
thorship ; nevertheless all were uncritically included 
in the third folio of his collected works (1664). 
Schlegel and a few other critics of repute have, on 
no grounds that merit acceptance, detected signs of 
Shakespeare's genuine w^ork in one of the six, ' The 
Yorkshire Tragedy ' ; it is 'a coarse, crude, and 
vigorous impromptu,' which is clearly by a far less 
experienced hand. 

The fraudulent practice of crediting Shakespeare 
with valueless plays from the pens of comparatively 
dull-witted contemporaries was in vogue among enter- 
prising* traders in literature both early and late in the 

confirms the theory that the .above-mentioned six plays, which have 
been wrongly claimed for Shakespeare, were really by Wentworth 
Smith. The use of the initials * W. S.' was not due to the pub- 
lishers' belief that Wentworth Smith was the author, but to their en- 
deavour to delude their customers into a belief that the plays were by 
Shakespeare. 



1 88 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

seventeenth century. The worthless old play on the 
subject of King John was attributed to Shakespeare 
in the reissues of i6i i and 1622. Humphrey Moseley, 
a reckless publisher of a later period, fraudulently 
entered on the ' Stationers' Register ' on September 9, 
1653, two pieces which he represented to be in whole 
or in part by Shakespeare, viz. ' The Merry Devill of 
Edmonton' and the ' History of Cardenio,' a share in 
which was assigned to Fletcher. ' The Merry Devill 
of Edmonton,' which was produced on the stage J^ef ore 
the close of the sixteenth century, was entered on 
the 'Stationers' Register,' October 22, 1607, and was 
first published anonymously in 1608; it is a delight- 
ful comedy, abounding in both humour and romantic 
sentiment ; at times it recalls scenes of the ' Merry 
Wives of Windsor,' but no sign of Shakespeare's 
workmanship is apparent. The ' History of Cardenio' 
is not extant.^ Francis Kirkman, another active 
London publisher, who first printed William Rowley's 
'Birth of Merlin' in 1662, described it on the 
title-page as ' written by William Shakespeare and 
William Rowley ' ; it was reprinted at Oxford in ' The 
Shakespeare Apocrypha,' edited by C. F. Tucker 
Brooke, in 1908. 

But poems no less than plays, in which Shake- 
speare had no hand, were deceptively placed to his 
credit as soon as his fame was established. 

'The 

Passionate In 1599 William Jaggard, a none too scru- 

Pilgrim.' , i t i • i • 11 

pulous publisher, issued a poetic anthology 
which he entitled ' The Passionate Pilgrim, by W. 

1 Cf. p. 267 infra. 



THE DEVELOPMENT OF DRAMATIC POWER 1S9 

Shakespeare.' The volume opened with two son- 
nets by Shakespeare which were not previously in 
print, and there followed three poems drawn from 
the already published * Love's Labour's Lost'; but 
the bulk of the volume was by Richard Barnfield 
and others.^ A third edition of the ' Passionate Pil- 
grim' was printed in 161 2 with unaltered title-page, 
although the unabashed Jaggard had added two new 
poems which he silently filched from Thomas Hey- 
wood's 'Troia Britannica.' Hey wood called attention 
to his own grievance in the dedicatory epistle before 
his 'Apology for Actors' (161 2), and he added that 
Shakespeare resented the more substantial injury 
which the publisher had done him. 'I know,' wrote 
Hey wood of Shakespeare, '[he was] much offended 
with M. Jaggard that (altogether unknown to him) 
presumed to make so bold with his name.' In the 
result the publisher seems to have removed Shake- 
speare's name from the title-page of a few copies. 
This is the only instance on record of a protest 
on Shakespeare's part against the many injuries 



1 There were twenty pieces in all. The five by Shakespeare are 
placed in the order i, ii, iii, v, xvi. Of the remainder, two — 'If music 
and sweet poetry agree' (No.viii) and 'As it fell upon a day' (No.xx) — 
were borrowed from Barnfield's Poems in divers Humors (1598). ' Ve- 
nus with Adonis sitting by her ' (No. xi) is from Bartholomew Griffin's 
Fidessa (1596); 'My flocks feed not' (No. xvii) is adapted from 
Thomas Weelkes's Madrigals (1597); 'Live with me and be my love' 
is by Marlowe; and the appended stanza, entitled ' Love's Answer,' by 
Sir Walter Ralegh (No. xix) ; ' Crabbed age and youth cannot live to- 
gether ' (No. xii) is a popular song often quoted by Elizabethan drama- 
tists. Nothing has been ascertained of the remaining nine poems, but see 
the introduction to the facsimile of the 1599 edition (Oxford, 1905, 4to). 



1 90 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

which he suffered at the hands of contemporary 
publishers. 

In 1601 Shakespeare's full name was appended to 
*a poetical essaie on the Phoenix and the Turtle,' 
' The which was published by Edward Blount in an 

Tn^fhe appendix to Robert Chester's ' Love's Martyr, 
Turtle.' QY Rosalius Complaint, allegorically shadow- 
ing the Truth of Love in the Constant Fate of the 
Phoenix and Turtle.* The drift of Chester's crabbed 
verse is not clear, nor can the praise of perspicuity be 
allowed to the appendix to which Shakespeare contri- 
buted, together with Marston, Chapman, Ben Jonson, 
and ' Ignoto.' The appendix is introduced by a new 
title-page running thus : * Hereafter follow diverse 
poeticall Essaies on the former subject, viz. : the 
Turtle and Phoenix. Done by the best and chiefest 
of our modern writers, with their names subscribed 
to their particular workes: never before extant.' 
Shakespeare's alleged contribution consists of thir- 
teen four-lined stanzas in trochaics, each line being of 
seven syllables, with the rhymes disposed as in Tenny- 
son's 'In Memoriam.' The concluding /threnos' is 
in five three-lined stanzas, also in trochaics, each 
stanza having a single rhyme. The poet describes in 
enigmatic language the obsequies of the Phoenix 
and the Turtle-dove, who had been united in life by 
the ties of a purely spiritual love. The poem may be 
a mere play of fancy without recondite intention, or it 
may be of allegorical import; but whether it bear 
relation to pending ecclesiastical, political, or meta- 
physical controversy, or whether it interpret popular 



THE DEVELOPMENT OF DRAMATIC POWER 191 

grief for the death of some leaders of contemporary 
society, is not easily determined.^ Happily Shake- 
speare wrote nothing else of like character, 

1 A unique copy of Chester's Love's Martyr is in Mr. Christie- 
Miller's library at Britwell. Of a reissue of the original edition in 161 1 
with a new title, The Annals of Great Brittaine, a copy (also unique) is 
in the British Museum. A reprint of the original edition was prepared 
for private circulation by Dr. Grosart in 1878, in his series of 'Occa- 
sional Issues.' It was also printed in the same year as one of the pub- 
lications of the New Shakspere Society. Matthew Roydon in his elegy 
on Sir Philip Sidney, appended to Spenser's Colin Clouts Come Home 
Againe, 1595, describes the part figuratively played in Sidney's obsequies 
by the turtle-dove, swan, phoenix, and eagle, in verses that very closely 
resemble Shakespeare's account of the funereal functions fulfilled by the 
same four birds in his contribution to Chester's volume. This resemblance 
suggests that Shakespeare's poem may be a fanciful adaptation of Roy- 
don's elegiac conceits without ulterior significance. Shakespeare's con- 
cluding 'Threnos' is imitated in metre and phraseology by Fletcher in 
his Mad Lover in the song * The Lover's Legacy to his Cruel Mistress.' 



192 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 



XII 

THE PRACTICAL AFFAIRS OF LIFE 

Shakespeare, in middle life, brought to practical 

affairs a singularly sane and sober temperament. 

In ' Ratseis Ghost' (1605), an anecdotal 

speare's biographv of Gamaliel Ratsey, a notorious 

practical 

tempera- highwayman, who was hanged at Bed- 
ford on March 26, 1605, the highwayman is 
represented as compelling a troop of actors whom he 
met by chance on the road to perform in his presence. 
At the close of the performance Ratsey, according to 
the memoir, addressed himself to a leader of the 
company, and cynically urged him to practise the 
utmost frugality in London. ' When thou feelest thy 
purse well lined (the counsellor proceeded), buy thee 
some place or lordship in the country that, growing 
weary of playing, thy money may there bring thee 
to dignity and reputation.' Whether or no Ratsey's 
biographer consciously identified the highwayman's 
auditor with Shakespeare, it was the prosaic course 
of conduct marked out by Ratsey that Shakespeare 
literally followed. As soon as his position in his pro- 
fession was assured, he devoted his energies to re-esta- 
blishing the fallen fortunes of his family in his native 



THE PRACTICAL AFFAIRS OF LIFE 1 93 

place, and to acquiring for himself and his successors 
the status of gentlefolk. 

His father's pecuniary embarrassments had steadily 

increased since his son's departure. Creditors harassed 

him unceasingly. In 1587 one Nicholas Lane 

His 

father's pursucd him for a debt for which he had 
become liable as surety for his brother Henry, 
who was still farming their father's lands at Snitterfield. 
Through 1588 and 1589 John Shakespeare retaliated 
with pertinacity on a debtor named John Tompson. But 
in 1 591 a creditor, Adrian Quiney, obtained a writ of 
distraint against him, and although in 1592 he attested 
inventories taken on the death of two neighbours, Ralph 
Shaw and Henry Field, father of the London printer, 
he was on December 25 of the same year ' presented * 
as a recusant for absenting himself from church. 
The commissioners reported that his absence was 
probably due to 'fear of process for debt.' He figures 
for the last time in the proceedings of the local court, 
in his customary role of defendant, on March 9, 1595. 
He was then joined with two fellow-traders — Philip 
Green, a chandler, and Henry Rogers, a butcher — as 
defendant in a 'suit brought by Adrian Quiney and 
Thomas Barker for the recovery of the sum of five 
pounds. Unlike his partners in the litigation, his name 
is not followed in the record by a mention of his 
calling, and when the suit reached a later stage his 
name was omitted altogether. These may be viewed 
as indications that in the course of the proceedings 
he finally retired from trade, which had been of late 
prolific in disasters for him. In January 1596-7 he 



194 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

conveyed a slip of land attached to his dwelling in 
Henley Street to one George Badger. 

There is a likelihood that the poet's wife fared, 
in the poet's absence, no better than his father. The 
only contemporary mention made of her between her 
His wife's marriage in 1582 and her husband's death in 
debt. 16 1 6 is as the borrower at an unascertained 

date (evidently before 1595) of forty shillings from 
Thomas Whittington, who had formerly been her 
father's shepherd. The money was unpaid when Whit- 
tington died in 1601, and he directed his executor to 
recover the sum from the poet and distribute it among 
the poor of Stratford.^ 

It was probably in 1 596 that Shakespeare re- 
turned, after nearly eleven years' absence, to his 
native town, and worked a revolution in the affairs of 
his family. The prosecutions of his father in the 
local court ceased. Thenceforth the poet's rela- 
tions with Stratford were uninterrupted. He still 
resided in London for most of the year ; but until the 
close of his professional career he paid the town at 
least one annual visit, and he was always formally 
described as 'of Stratford-on-Avon, gentleman.' He 
was no doubt there on August 11, 1596, when his 
only son, Hamnet, was buried in the parish church; 
the boy was eleven and a half years old. 

At the same date the poet's father, despite his 
pecuniary embarrassments, took a step, by way of 
regaining his prestige, which must be assigned to the 

1 Halliwell-Phillipps, ii. 186. 



THE PRACTICAL AFFAIRS OF LIFE 195 

poet's intervention.^ He made application to the 
College of Heralds for a coat-of-arms.^ Then, as 
now, the heralds when bestowing new coats-of-arms 
commonly credited the applicant's family with an 
imaginary antiquity, and little reliance need be placed 
on the biographical or genealogical statements alleged 
in grants of arms. The poet's father or the poet 
himself when first applying to the College stated that 
The coat- John Shakespeare, in 1 568, while he was bailiff 
of-arms. Qf Stratford, and while he was by virtue of 
that office a justice of the peace, had obtained from 
Robert Cook, then Clarenceux herald, a ' pattern ' or 
sketch of an armorial coat. This allegation is not 
noticed in the records of the College, and may be a 
formal fiction designed by John Shakespeare and his 
son to recommend their claim to the notice of the 
heralds in 1596. The negotiations of 1568, if they 
were not apocryphal, were certainly abortive ; other- 
wise there would have been no necessity for the further 
action of 1596. In any case, on October 20j, 1596, a 
draft, which remains in the College of Arms, was 



1 There is an admirable discussion of the question involved in the 
poet's heraldry in Herald and Genealogist, i. 510. Facsimiles of all 
the documents preserved in the College of Arms are given in Miscellanea 
Genealogica et Heraldica, 2nd ser. 1886, i. 109. Hallivvell-Phillipps 
prints imperfectly one of the 1596 draft-grants, and that of 1599 (^Out- 
lines, ii. 56, 60), but does not distinguish the character of the negotia- 
tion of the earlier year from that of the negotiation of the later year. 

2 It is still customary at the College of Arms to inform an applicant 
for a coat-of-arms vv^ho has a father alive that the application should be 
made in the father's name, and the transaction conducted as if the 
father were the principal. It was doubtless on advice of this kind that 
Shakespeare was acting in the negotiations that are described below. 



196 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

prepared under the direction of William Dethick, 
Garter King-of-Arms, granting John's request for 
a coat-of-arms. Garter stated, with characteristic 
vagueness, that he had been ' by credible report ' 
informed that the applicant's ' parentes and late 
antecessors were for theire valeant and f aithf ull service 
advanced and rewarded by the most prudent prince 
King Henry the Seventh of famous memorie, sythence 
whiche tyme they have continewed at those partes [2.^. 
Warwickshire] in good reputacionand credit'; and that 
'thesaid John [had] maryed Mary, daughter an diieiress 
of Robert Arden, of Wilmcote, gent.' In considera- 
tion of these titles to honour, Garter declared that he 
assigned to Shakespeare this shield, viz. : 'Gold, on a 
bend sable, a spear of the first, and for his crest or cog- 
nizance a falcon, his wings displayed argent, standing on 
a wreath of his colours, supporting a spear gold steeled 
as aforesaid.' In the margin of this draft-grant there 
is a pen sketch of the arms and crest, and above them 
is written the motto, ' Non Sans Droict.'^ A second 
copy of the draft, also dated in 1596, is extant at the 
College. The only alterations are the substitution of 
the word 'grandfather' for 'antecessors' in the account 
of John Shakespeare's ancestry, and the substitution 
of the word ' esquire ' for ' gent ' in the description of 
his wife's father, Robert Arden. At the foot of this 
draft, however, appeared some disconnected and un- 

^ In a manuscript in the British Museum {^Harl. MS. 6140, f. 45) is a 
copy of the tricking of the arms of William 'Shakspere,' which is 
described ' as a pattent per Will'm Dethike Garter, principale King of 
Armes '; this is figured in French's Shakespeareana Genealogica, p. 524. 



THE PRACTICAL AFFAIRS OF LIFE 1 97 

verifiable memoranda which had been supplied to the 
heralds, to the effect that John had been bailiff of 
Stratford, had received a ' pattern ' of a shield from 
Clarenceux Cook, was a man of substance, and had 
married into a worshipful family.^ 

Neither of these drafts was fully executed. Many 
Elizabethan actors were granted coats-of-arms,^ and it 
is unlikely that Shakespeare's profession was deemed 
a bar to completing the transaction. It may have 
been that the unduly favourable representations made 
to the College respecting John Shakespeare's social 
and pecuniary position excited suspicion even in the 
habitually credulous minds of the heralds. At any 
rate, Shakespeare and his father allowed three years 
to elapse before (as far as extant documents show) 
they made a further endeavour to secure the coveted 
distinction. In 1599 their efforts were crowned with 
success. Changes in the interval among the officials 
at the College may have facilitated the proceedings. 
In 1597 the Earl of Essex had become Earl Marshal 
and chief of the Heralds' College (the office had been 
in commission in 1596); while the great scholar and 

1 These memoranda ran (with interlmeations in brackets) : 

[This John shoeth] A patierne therof under Clarent Cookes hand in paper xx. 
years past. [The Q. officer and cheffe of the towne] 

[A Justice of peace] And was a Baylife of Stratford uppo Avon xv. or xvj. years 
past. 

That he hathe lands and tenements of good wealth and substance [500 li.] 

That he mar[ried a daughter and heyre of Arden, a gent, of worship.] 

2 Two actors of Shakespeare's company, Augustine Philhpps and 
Thomas Pope, who obtained grants of arms, were charged with fraudu- 
lently misrepresenting their descent by William Smith, Rougedragon, 
in a MS. tract (in private hands) entitled ' A brief discourse of the 
causes of discord among the officers of Arms,' etc. (c. 1600). 



198 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

antiquary, William Camden, had joined the College, 
also in 1597, as Clarenceux King-of-Arms. The poet 
was favourably known to both Camden and the Earl 
of Essex, the close friend of the Earl of Southampton. 
His father's application now took a new form. No 
grant of arms was asked for. It was asserted without 
qualification that the coat, as set out in the draft-grants 
of 1596, had been ^^.yi'z^;^^^^ to John Shakespeare while 
he was bailiff, and the heralds were merely invited to 
give him a * recognition ' or * exemplification^ of it.^ 
At the same time he asked permission for himself to 
impale, and his eldest son and other children to 
quarter, on ' his ancient coat-of-arms ' that of the 
Ardens of Wilmcote, his wife's family. The College 
officers were characteristically complaisant. A draft 
was prepared under the hands of Dethick, the Garter 
King, and of Camden, the Clarenceux King, granting 
the required * exemplification ' and authorising the 
required impalement and quartering. On one point 
only did Dethick and Camden betray conscientious 
scruples. Shakespeare and his father obviously 
desired the heralds to recognise the title of Mary 
Shakespeare (the poet's mother) to bear the arms 
of the great Warwickshire family of Arden, then 
seated at Park Hall. But the relationship, if it existed, 
was undetermined ; the Warwickshire Ardens were 
gentry of influence in the county, and were certain to 

1 An * exemplification ' was invariably secured more easily than a 
new grant of arms. The heralds might, if they chose, tacitly accept, 
without examination, the applicant's statement that his family had borne 
arms long ago, and they thereby regarded themselves as relieved of the 
obligation of close inquiry into his present status. 



THE PRACTICAL AFFAIRS OF LIFE 1 99 

protest against any hasty assumption of identity be- 
tween their Hne and that of the humble farmer of Wilm- 
cote. After tricking the Warwickshire Arden coat in 
the margin of the draft-grant for the purpose of indicat- 
ing the manner of its impalement, the heralds on second 
thoughts erased it. They substituted in their sketch 
the arms of an Arden family living at Alvanley in 
the distant county of Cheshire. With that stock there 
was no pretence that Robert Arden of Wilmcote was 
lineally connected; but the bearers of the Alvanley coat 
were unlikely to learn of its suggested impalement 
with the Shakespeare shield, and the heralds were less 
liable to the risk of litigation. But the Shakespeares 
wisely relieved the College of all anxiety by omitting 
to assume the Arden coat. The Shakespeare arms 
alone are displayed with full heraldic elaboration on the 
monument above the poet's grave in Stratford Church ; 
they alone appear on the seal and on the tombstone of 
his elder daughter, Mrs. Susanna Hall, impaled with 
the arms of her husband ; ^ and they alone were 
quartered by Thomas Nash, the first husband of the 
poet's granddaughter, Elizabeth Hall.^ 

Some objection was taken a few years later to the 
grant even of the Shakespeare shield, but it was 
based on vexatious grounds that c6uld not be upheld. 
Early in the seventeenth century Ralph Brooke, who 
was York herald from 1593 till his death in 1625, and 
was long engaged in a bitter quarrel with his fellow- 

^ On the gravestone of John Hall, Shakespeare's elder son-in-law, 
the Shakespeare arms are similarly impaled with those of Hall. 
2 French, Genealogica Skakespeareana, p. 413. 



200 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

officers at the College, complained that the arms 
' exemplified ' to Shakespeare usurped the coat of Lord 
Mauley, on whose shield ' a bend sable ' also figured. 
Dethick and Camden, who were responsible for any 
breach of heraldic etiquette in the matter, answered 
that the Shakespeare shield bore no more resemblance 
to the Mauley coat than it'did to that of the Harley 
and the Ferrers families, which also bore *a bend sable,' 
but that in point of fact itdiffered conspicuously from all 
three by the presence of a spear on the ' bend.' Dethick 
and Camden added, with customary want of precision, 
that the person to whom the grant was made had 
* borne magistracy and was justice of peace at Strat- 
f ord-on-Avon ; he maried the daughter and heire of 
Arderne, and was able to maintain that Estate.' ^ 

Meanwhile, in 1597, the poet had taken openly 
in his own person a more effective step in the way of 
rehabilitating himself and his family in the eyes of 
Purchase of his fcllow-townsmen. On May 4 he pur- 
New Place. Qj^aggfj ii^Q largest house , in the town, 
known as New Place. It had been built by Sir 
Hugh Clopton more than a century before, and 
seems to have fallen into a ruinous condition. But 
Shakespeare paid for it, with two barns and two 
gardens, the then Substantial sum of 60/. Owing 
to the sudden death of the vendor, WiUiam Under- 

^ The details of Brooke's accusation are not extant, and are only to 
be deduced from the answer of Garter and Clarenceux to Brooke's 
complaint, two copies of which are accessible : one is in the vol, W-Z 
at the Heralds' College, f. 276; and the other, slightly differing, is in 
Ashmole MS. 846, ix, f. 50. Both are printed in the Herald and 
Genealogist, i. 514. 



THE PRACTICAL AFFAIRS OF LIFE 201 

hill, on July 7, 1597, the original transfer of the 
property was left at the time incomplete. Underhill's 
son Fulk died a felon, and he was succeeded in the 
family estates by his brother Hercules, who on 
coming of age. May 1602, completed in a new deed 
the transfer of New Place to Shakespeare. ^ On 
February 4, 1597-8, Shakespeare was described as a 
householder in Chapel Street ward, in which New 
Place was situated, and as the owner of ten quarters 
of corn. The inventory was made owing to the 
presence of famine in the town, and only two inha- 
bitants were credited with a larger holding. In the 
same year (1598) he procured stone for the repair 
of the house, and before 1602 had planted a fruit 
orchard. He is traditionally said to have interested 
himself in the garden, and, to have planted with 
his own hands a mulberry-tree, which was long a 
prominent feature of it. When this was cut down, 
in 1758, numerous relics were made from it, and 
were treated with an almost superstitious venera- 
tion.^ Shakespeare does not appear to have per- 
manently settled at New Place till 16 11. In 1609 

1 Notes and Queries, 8th ser. v. 478. 

^ The tradition that Shakespeare planted the mulberry-tree was not 
put on record till it was cut down in 1758. In 1760 mention is made of 
it in a letter of thanks in the corporation's archives from the Steward of 
the, Court of Record to the corporation of Stratford for presenting him 
with a standish made from the wood. But, according to the testimony 
of old inhabitants confided to Malone (cf. his Life of Shakespeare, 1790, 
p. 118), the legend had been orally current in Stratford since Shake- 
speare's lifetime. The tree was perhaps planted in 1609, when a French- 
man named Veron distributed a number of young mulberry-trees through 
the midland counties by order of James I, who desired to encourage 
the culture of silkworms (cf. Halliwell-Phillipps, i. 134, 411-16). 



202 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

the house, or part of it, was occupied by the town 
clerk, Thomas Greene, 'alias Shakespeare, -who 
cla:imed to be the poet's cousin. His grandmother 
seems to have been a Shakespeare. He often acted 
as the poet's legal adviser. 

It was doubtless under their son's guidance that 
Shakespeare's father and mother set on foot in 
November 1597 — six months after his acquisition of 
New Place — a lawsuit against John Lambert for the 
recovery of the mortgaged estate of Asbies in-Wilm- 
cote. The litigation dragged on for some years 
without result. 

Three letters written during 1598 by leading men 
at Stratford are still extant among the Corporation's 
archives, and leave no doubt of the reputation for 
wealth and influence with which the purchase of New 
Place invested the poet in his fellow-townsmen's 
eves. Abraham Sturlev, who was once 

Appeals -^ •' 

for aid bailiff, writing early in 1598, apparently 

from his i i • x i -ni • 

fellow- to a brother m London, says: 'This is 

townsmen. . , n r r ^i > 

one special remembrance Irom our lather s 
motion. It seemeth by him that our countryman, Mr. 
Shakspere, is willing to disburse some money upon 
some odd yardland or other at Shottery, or near 
about us : he thinketh it a very fit pattern to move 
him to deal in the matter of our tithes. By the in- 
structions you can give him thereof, and by the 
friends he can make therefor, we think it a fair mark 
for him to shoot at, and would do us much good.' 
Richard Quiney, another townsman, father of Thomas 
(afterwards one of Shakespeare's two sons-in-law), 



THE PRACTICAL AFFAIRS OF LIFE 203 

was, in the autumn of the same year, harassed by 
debt, and on October 25 appealed to Shakespeare for 
a loan of money. * Loving countryman,' the applica- 
tion ran, ' I am bold of you as of a friend craving 
your help with xxx//.' Quiney was staying at the 
Bell Inn in Carter Lane, London, and his main business 
in the metropolis was to procure exemption for the 
town of Stratford from the payment of a subsidy. 
Abraham Sturley, writing to Quiney from Stratford 
ten days later (on November 4, 1598), pointed out to 
him that since the town was wholly unable, in conse- 
quence of the dearth of corn, to pay the tax, he hoped 
* that our countryman, Mr. Wm. Shak., would procure 
us money, which I will like of, as I shall hear when, 
and where, and how.' 

The financial prosperity to which this corre- 
spondence and the transactions immediately pre- 
ceding it point has been treated as one of 

Financial ^ ^ 

position the chief mysteries of Shakespeare's career, 

before 1599. ■, , ^ , . ^^ , . . ,_, 

but the dirriculties are gratuitous. There is 
practically nothing in Shakespeare's financial posi- 
tion that a study of the contemporary conditions of 
theatrical life does not fully explain. It was not 
until 1599, when the Globe Theatre was built, that 
he acquired any share in the profits of a playhouse. 
But his revenues as a successful dramatist and actor 
were by no means contemptible at an earlier date. 
His gains in the capacity of dramatist formed the 
smaller source of income. The highest price known 
to have been paid before 1599 to an author for a 
play by the manager of an acting company was 11/.; 



204 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

6/. was the lowest rate.i A small additional gratuity 
— rarely apparently exceeding ten shillings — -was be- 
stowed on a dramatist whose piece on its first produc- 
tion was especially well received ; and the author was 
by custom allotted, by way of 'benefit,' a certain pro- 
portion of the receipts of the theatre on the production 
of a play for the second time.^ Other sums, amount- 
ing at times to as much as 4/., were bestowed on the 
author for revising and altering an old play for a revival. 
The nineteen plays which may be set to Shakespeare's 
credit between 1591 and 1599, combined with such 
revising work as fell to his lot during those eight 
years, cannot consequently have brought him less 
than 200/., or some 20/. a year. Eight or nine of 
these plays were published during the period, but the 



1 I do not think we shall over-estimate the present value of Shake- 
speare's income if we multiply each of its items by eight, but it is diffi- 
cult to state authoritatively the ratio between the value of money in 
Shakespeare's time and in our own. The money value of corn then and 
now is nearly identical; but other necessaries of life — meat, milk, 
eggs, wool, building materials, and the like — were by comparison ludi- 
crously cheap in Shakespeare's day. If we strike the average between 
the low price of these commodities and the comparatively high price of 
corn, the average price of necessaries will be found to be in Shakespeare's 
day about an eighth of what it is now. The cost of luxuries is also now 
about eight times the price that it was in the sixteenth or seventeenth 
century. Sixpence was the usual price of a new quarto or octavo book 
such as would now be sold at prices ranging between three shillings 
and sixpence and six shillings. Half a crown was charged for the best- 
placed seats in the best theatres. The purchasing power of one Eliza- 
bethan pound might be generally defined in regard to both necessaries and 
luxuries as equivalent to that of eight pounds of the present currency. 

" Cf. Henslowe's Diary, ed. Collier, pp. xxviii seq. After the 
Restoration the receipts at the third performance were given for the 
author's ' benefit.' 



THE PRACTICAL AFFAIRS OF LIFE 205 

publishers operated independently of the author, 
taking all the risks and, at the same time, all the re- 
ceipts. The publication of Shakespeare's plays in no 
way affected his monetary resources, although his 
friendly relations with the printer Field doubtless 
secured him, despite the absence of any copyright 
law, some part of the profits in the large and con- 
tinuous sale of his poems. 

But it was as an actor that at an early date he 
acquired a genuinely substantial and secure income. 
There is abundance of contemporary evidence to show 
that the stage was for an efficient actor an assured 
avenue to comparative wealth. In 1 590 Robert Greene 
describes in his tract entitled 'Never too Late ' a meet- 
ing with a player whom he took by his ' outward habit ' 
to be 'a gentleman of great living ' and a ' substan- 
tial man.' The player informed Greene th^t he had 
at the beginning of his career travelled on foot, 
bearing his theatrical properties on his back, but he 
prospered so rapidly that at the time of speak- 
ing ' his very share in playing apparel would not be 
sold for 200/.' Among his neighbours * where he 
dwelt ' he was reputed able ' at his proper cost to build 
a windmill.' In the university play, ' The Return from 
Parnassus' (1601 ?), a poor student enviously com- 
plains of the wealth and position which a successful 
actor derived from his calling. 

England affords those glorious vagabonds, 
That carried erst their fardles on their backs, 
Coursers to ride on through the gazing streets, 
Sweeping it in their glaring satin suits, 
And pages to attend their masterships; 



2o6 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

With mouthing words that better wits had framed, 
They purchase lands and now esquires are made.i 

The travelling actors, from whom the highway- 
man Gamaliel Ratsey extorted a free performance in 
1604, were represented as men with the certainty 
of a rich competency in prospect.^ An efficient 
actor received in 1635 as large a regular salary as 
180/. The lowest known valuation set an actor's 
wages at 3^". a day, or about 45/. a year. Shake- 
speare's emoluments as an actor before 1599 are 
not likely to have fallen below 100/. ; while fhe re- 
muneration due to performances at Court or in noble- 
men's houses, if the accounts of 1594 be accepted 
as the basis of reckoning, added some 15/. 

Thus over 130/. (equal to 1,040/. of to-day) would 
be Shakespeare's average annual revenue before 1599. 
Such a sum would be regarded as a very large income 
in a country town. According fo the author of 
* Ratseis Ghost,' the actor, who may well have been 
meant for Shakespeare, practised in London a strict 
frugality, and there seems no reason why Shakespeare 

1 Return frojji Parnassus, V. i. 10-16. 

2 Cf. H[enry] P[arrot]'s Laqiiei Ridiculosi or Springes for Wood- 
cocks, 1613, Epigram No. 131, headed ' Theatrum Licencia ' : 

Cotta's become a player most men know, 

And will no longer tnke such toy ling paines; 
For here's the spring (saith he) whence pleasures flow 

And brings them damnable excessive gaines: 
That now are cedars growne from shrubs and sprigs, 

Since Greene's Tti Quoque and those Garlicke Jigs. 

Greene's Tu Quoque was a popular comedy that had once been per- 
formed at Court by the Queen's players, and ' Garlicke Jigs ' alluded 
derisively to drolling entertainments, interspersed with dances, which 
won much esteem from patrons of the smaller playhouses. 



THE PRACTICAL AFFAIRS OF LIFE 20/ 

should not have been able in 1597 to draw from his 
savings 60/. wherewith to buy New Place. His 
resources might well justify his fellow-townsmen's 
opinion of his wealth in 1598, and suffice be- 
tween 1597 and 1599 to meet his expenses, in re- 
building the house, stocking the barns with grain, and 
conducting various legal proceedings. But, according 
to tradition, he had in the Earl of Southampton a 
wealthy and generous friend who on one occasion 
gave him a large gift of money to enable ' him to go 
through with' a purchase to which he had a mind. 
A munificent gift, added to professional gains, leaves 
nothing unaccounted for in Shakespeare's financial 
position before 1599. 

After 1599 his sources of income from the theatre 
greatly increased. In 1635 the heirs of the actor 
Financial Richard Burbage were engaged in litigation 
after"°^ respecting their proprietary rights in the two 
^599- playhouses, the Globe and the Blackfriars 

theatres. The documents relating to this litigation 
supply authentic, although not very detailed, informa- 
tion of Shakespeare's interest in theatrical property.^ 
Richard Burbage, with his brother Cuthbert, erected 
at their sole cost the Globe Theatre in the winter of 
1 598-9, and the Blackfriars Theatre, which their father 
was building at the time of his death in 1597, was also 
their property. After completing the Globe they 
leased out, for twenty-one years, shares in the receipts 

1 The documents which are now in the Public Record Office among 
the papers relating to the Lord Chamberlain's Office, were printed in 
full by Halliwell-Phillipps, i, 312-19. 



208 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

of the theatre to ' those deserving men Shakespeare, 
Hemings, Condell, PhiHps, and others.' All the share- 
holders named were, like Burbage, active members of 
Shakespeare's company of players. The shares, which 
numbered sixteen in all, carried with them the obli- 
gation of providing for the expenses of the playhouse, 
and were doubtless in the first instance freely bestowed. 
Hamlet claims, in the play scene (iii. ii. 293), that 
the success of his improvised tragedy deserved to ' get 
him a fellowship in a cry of players ' — a proof that 
a successful dramatist might reasonably expect such 
a reward for a conspicuous effort. In * Hamlet,' 
moreover, both a share and a half -share of 'a fellow- 
ship in a cry of players ' are described as assets of 
enviable value (iii. ii. 294-6). How many shares 
originally fell to Shakespeare there is no means of 
determining. Records of later subdivisions suggest 
that they did not exceed two. The Globe was an 
exceptionally large and popular playhouse. It would 
accommodate some two thousand spectators, whose 
places cost them sums varying between twopence and 
half a crown. The receipts were therefore considera- 
ble, hardly less than 25/. daily, or some 8,000/. a year. 
According to the documents of 1635, an actor-sharer 
at the Globe received above 200/. a year on each share, 
besides his actor's salary of 180/. Thus Shakespeare 
drew from the Globe Theatre, at the lowest estimate, 
more than 500/. a year in all. 

His interest in the Blackfriars Theatre was com- 
paratively unimportant, and is less easy to estimate. 
The often quoted documents on which Collier de- 



THE PRACTICAL AFFAIRS OF LIFE 209 

pended to prove him a substantial shareholder in that 
playhouse have long been proved to be forgeries. The 
pleas in the lawsuit of 1635 show that the Burbages, 
the owners, leased the Blackfriars Theatre after its 
establishment in 1597 for a long term of years to the 
master of the Children of the Chapel, but bought out 
the lessee at the end of 1609, and then 'placed' in 
it ' men-players which were Hemings, Condell, Shake- 
speare, &c.' To these and other actors they allotted 
shares in the receipts, the shares numbering eight in 
all. The profits were far smaller than at the Globe, 
and if Shakespeare held one share (certainty on the 
point is impossible), it added not more than 100/. a 
year to his income, and that not until 16 10. 

His remuneration as dramatist between 1599 and 
161 1 was also by no means contemptible. Prices 
paid to dramatists for plays rose rapidly in the early 
years of the seventeenth century,^ while the value 
of the author's ' benefits ' grew with the growing 
Later voguc of the theatre. The exceptional 

income. popularity of Shakespeare's plays after 1599 
gave him the full advantage of higher rates of pecu- 
niary reward in all directions, and the seventeen plays 
which were produced by him between that year and 
the close of his professional career in 161 1 probably 
brought him an average return of 20/. each or 340/. in 
all — nearly 30/. a year. At the same time the increase 
in the number of Court performances under James I, 

1 In 1613 Robert Daborne, a playwright of insignificant reputation, 
charged for a drama as much as 25/. Alleyn Papers, ed. Collier, 
p. 65. 

P 



210 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

and the additional favour bestowed on Shakespeare's 
company, may well have given that source of income 
the enhanced value of 20/. a year.i 

Thus Shakespeare in the later period of his life 
was earning above 600/. a year in money of the period. 
With so large a professional income he could easily, 
with good management, have completed those pur- 
chases of houses and land at Stratford on which he 
laid out, between 1599 ^^^ 161 3, a total sum of 970/., 
or an annual average of 70/. These properties, it 
must be remembered, represented investments,^and he 
drew rent from most of them. He traded, too, in 
agricultural produce. There is nothing inherently im- 
probable in the statement of John Ward, the seven- 
teenth-century vicar of Stratford, that in his last years 
' he spent at the rate of a thousand a year, as I have 
heard,' although we may reasonably make allowance 
for exaggeration in the round figures. 

Shakespeare realised his theatrical shares several 
years before his death in 16 16, when he left, accord- 
ing to his will, 350/. in money in addition to an ex- 
tensive real estate and numerous personal belongings. 
There was nothing^ exceptional in this com- 

Incomes , . . 

of fellow- parative affluence. His friends and fellow- 
actors, Heming and Condell, amassed equally 
large, if not larger, fortunes. Burbage died in 16 19 
worth 300/. in land, besides personal property ; while a 

1 Ten pounds was the ordinary fee paid to actors for a performance 
at the Court of James I. Shakespeare's company appeared, annually 
twenty times and more at "Whitehall during the early years of James I's 
reign, and Shakespeare, as being both author and actor, doubtless 
received a larger share of the receipts than his colleagues. 



THE PRACTICAL AFFAIRS OF LIFE 211 

contemporary actor and theatrical proprietor, Edward 
Alleyn, purchased the manor of Dulwich for 10,000/. 
(in money of his own day), and devoted it, with much 
other property, to pubHc uses, at the same time as he 
made ample provision for his family out of the residue 
of his estate. Gifts from patrons may have continued 
occasionally to augment Shakespeare's resources, but 
his wealth can be satisfactoril}^ assigned to better at- 
tested agencies. There is no ground for treating it 
as of mysterious origin.!^ 

Between 1599 and 161 1, while London remained 
Shakespeare's chief home, he built up kt Stratford a 
large landed estate which his purchase of New Place 
had inaugurated. In 1601 his father died, being buried 
on September 8. He apparently left no will, and the 
poet, as the eldest son, inherited the houses in Henley 
Street, the only portion of the property of the elder 
Shakespeare or of his wife which had not been alien- 
ated to creditors. Shakespeare permitted his mother 
to reside in one of the Henley Street houses till her 
death (she was buried September 9, 1608), and he 
Formation ^^^i^cd a modcst rent from the other. On 
of the May I, 1602, he purchased for 320/. of the 

estate at J > > r ^ ^ 

Stratford, rich landowners William and John Combe 
of Stratford 107 acres of arable land near 
the town. The conveyance was delivered, in the 
poet's absence, to his brother Gilbert, ' to the use of 
the within named William Shakespere.' ^ A third 
purchase quickly followed. On September 28, 1602, 

1 Cf. Halliwell-Phillipps, i. 312-19; Fleay, S^a^e, pp. 324-8. 

2 Halliwell-Phillipps, ii. 17-19. 



212 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

at a court baron of the manor of Rowington, one 
Walter Getley transferred to the poet a cottage and 
garden which were situated at Chapel Lane, opposite 
the lower grounds of New Place. They were held 
practically in fee-simple at the annual rental of 2s. 6d. 
It appears from the roll that Shakespeare did not 
attend the manorial court held on the day fixed for 
the transfer of the property at Rowington, and it was 
consequently stipulated then that the estate should 
remain in the hands of the lady of the manor until he 
completed the purchase in person. At a later period he 
was admitted' to the copyhold, and he settled the re- 
mainder on his two daughters in fee. In April 1610 
he purchased from the Combes 20 acres of pasture 
land, to add to the 107 of arable land that he had 
acquired of the same owners in 1602. 

As early as 1598 Abraham Sturley had suggested 
that Shakespeare should purchase the tithes of Strat- 
ford. Seven years later, on July 24, 1605, 
Stratford he bought for 440/. of Ralph Huband an 
unexpired term of thirty-one years of a 
ninety-two years' lease of a moiety of the tithes of 
Stratford, Old Stratford, Bishopton, and Welcombe. 
The moiety was subject to a rent of 17/. to the 
corporation, who were the reversionary owners on 
the lease's expiration, and of 5/. to John Barker, the 
heir of a former proprietor. The investment brought 
Shakespeare, under the most favourable circum- 
stances, no more than an annuity of 38/., and the 
refusal of persons who claimed an interest in the 
other moiety to acknowledge the full extent of their 



THE PRACTICAL AFFAIRS OF LIFE 213 

liability to the corporation led that body to demand 
from the poet payments justly due from others. 
After 1609 he joined with two interested persons, 
Richard Lane of Awston and Thomas Greene, the 
town clerk of Stratford, in a suit in Chancery to deter- 
mine the exact responsibilities of all the tithe-owners, 
and in 16 12 they presented a bill of complaint to 
Lord-chancellor Ellesmere, with what result is un- 
known. His acquisition of a part-ownership in the 
tithes was fruitful in legal embarrassments. 

Shakespeare inherited his father's love of litigation, 

and stood rigorously by his rights in all his business 

relations. In March 1600 he recovered 

Recovery 

of small in London a debt of 7/. from one John 
Clayton. In July 1604, in the local court 
at Stratford, he sued one Philip Rogers, to whom 
he had supplied since the preceding March malt 
to the value of i/. 19^". lod., and had on June 
25 lent 2s. in cash. Rogers paid back 6s. , and 
Shakespeare sought the balance of the account, 
1 1, i^s, lod. During 1608 and 1609 he was at law 
with another fellow-townsman, John Addenbroke. 
On February 15, 1609, Shakespeare, who was ap- 
parently represented by his solicitor and kinsman, 
Thomas Greene, ^ obtained judgment from a jury 
against Addenbroke for the payment of 6/., and 
i/. 5i". costs, but Addenbroke left the town, and the 
triumph proved barren. Shakespeare avenged him- 
self by proceeding against one Thomas Horneby, 
who had acted as the absconding debtor's bail.^ 

1 See p. 202. 2 Halliwell-Phillipps, ii. 77-80. 



214 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 



XIII 

MATURITY OF GENIUS 

With an inconsistency that is more apparent than 
real, the astute business transactions of these years 

( 1 597-161 1) synchronise with the produc- 
vvork in tion of Shakcspcarc's noblest literary work 

— of his most sustained and serious efforts in 
comedy, tragedy, and romance. In 1599, after aban- 
doning English history with 'Henry V,' he addressed 
himself to the composition of his three most perfect 
essays in comedy — ' Much Ado about Nothing,' * As 
You Like It,' and 'Twelfth Night' Their good- 
humoured tone seems to reveal their author in his 
happiest frame of mind ; in each the gaiety and 
tenderness of youthful womanhood are exhibited in 
fascinating union; while Shakespeare's lyric gift 
bred no sweeter melodies than the songs with which 
the three plays are interspersed. At the same time 
each comedy enshrines such penetrating reflections on 
mysterious problems of life as mark the stage of 
maturity in the growth of the author's intellect. The 
first two of the three plays were entered on the 
'Stationers' Registers' before August 4, 1600, on 
which day a prohibition was set on their publication, 
as well as on the publication of ' Henry V ' and of Ben 



MATURITY OF GENIUS 21 5 

Jonson's * Every Man in his Humour.' This was one 
of the many efforts of the acting company to stop the 
publication of plays in the belief that the practice was 
injurious to their rights. The effort was only partially 
successful. 'Much Ado,' like 'Henry V,' was pub- 
lished before the close of the year.^ Neither ' As You 
Like It ' nor ' Twelfth Night,' however, was printed 
till it appeared in the Folio. 

In * Much Ado,' which appears to have been 
written in 1599, the brilliant and spirited comedy of 
Benedick and Beatrice, and of the blundering watch- 
men Dogberry and Verges, is wholly original ; but the 
'Much sombre story of Hero and Claudio, about 
'^^°-' which the comic incident revolves, is traceable 

to an ItaHan source. Bandello had first narrated the 
sad experiences of the heroine, whom he christened 
Fenicia, in his * Novelle ' (No. xxii); Bandello's 
version was translated in Belief orest's * Histoires 
Tragiques,' and Ariosto grafted it on his ' Orlando 
Furioso ' (canto v). Ariosto's rendering of the story, 
in which the injured heroine is called Ginevra and 
her lover Ariodante, was dramatised in England long 
before Shakespeare designed his comedy. According 
to the accounts of the Court revels, *A Historic of 
Ariodante and Ginevra was shown before her Majestie 
on Shrovetuesdaie at night' in 1583.^ In 1591 
Ariosto's account was turned into English by Sir 

1 Much Ado was licensed for publication to Andrew Wise and 
William Aspley on August 23, 1600, at the same time as the Second 
Part of Henry /F(Arber, iii. 170). It was printed for the two publishers 
in partnership by Valentine Simmes (or Sims). 

2 Accotmts of the Revels, ed. Peter Cunningham (Shakespeare 
Society), p. 177; Variorum Shakespeare, 1 82 1, iii. 406. 



2l6 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

John Harington in his spirited translation of * Orlando 
Furioso.* Either the dramatised ' Historic ' (which 
has not survived in print or manuscript) or Haring- 
ton's verse may be regarded as the immediate source 
of the serious plot of * Much Ado.' Throughout the 
play Shakespeare blended with a convincing natural- 
ness the serious aspects of humanity which the Italian 
story suggested and the ludicrous aspects which he 
wholly illustrated by incident of his own invention. 
The popular comic actor William Kemp filled the 
role of Dogberry, and Cowley appeared as Verges. 
In both the Quarto of 1600 and the Folio of 1623 
these actors' names are prefixed by a copyist's error 
to some of the speeches allotted to the two characters 
(act IV. sc. ii). 

* As You Like It/ which quickly followed, is a 
dramatic adaptation of Lodge's romance, * Rosalynde, 
'As You Euphues Golden Legacie* (1590), but 
Like It. Shakespeare added three new characters 
of first-rate interest — Jaques, the meditative cynic; 
Touchstone, the most carefully elaborated of all 
Shakespeare's fools ; and the hoyden Audrey. Hints 
for the scene of Orlando's encounter with Charles the 
Wrestler, and for Touchstone's description of the 
diverse shapes of a lie, were clearly drawn from a 
book called * Saviolo's Practise,' a manual of the art 
of self-defence, which appeared in 1595 from the pen 
of Vincentio Saviolo, an Italian fencing-master in 
the service of the Earl of Essex. None of Shake- 
speare's comedies breathes a more placid temper or 
approaches more nearly to a pastoral drama. Yet 



MATURITY OF GENIUS 21/ 

there is no lack of intellectual or poetic energy in the 
enunciation of the contemplative philosophy which is 
cultivated in the Forest of Arden. In Rosalind, Celia, 
Phoebe, and Audrey, four types of youthful woman- 
hood are contrasted with the liveliest humour. 

The date of 'Twelfth Night* is probably 1600, 
and its name, which has no reference to the story, 
' Twelfth doubtless commemorates the fact that it was 
Night. designed for a Twelfth Night celebration. 

* The new map with the augmentation of the Indies,' 
spoken of by Maria (in. ii. 86), was a respectful 
reference to the great map of the world or ' hydro- 
graphical description' which was first issued with 
Hakluyt's * Voyages' in 1599 or 1600, and first dis- 
closed the full extent of recent explorations of the 

* Indies' in the New World and the Old.^ Like the 

* Comedy of Errors,' * Twelfth Night ' achieved the 
distinction, early in its career, of a presentation at an 
Inn of Court. It was produced at Middle Temple 
Hall on February 2, 1601-2, and Manningham, a bar- 
rister who was present, described the performance.^ 
Manningham wrote that the piece was ' much like the 
"Comedy of Errors" or "Menechmi" in Plautus, 
but most like and neere to that in Italian called 
" Inganni." ' Two sixteenth-century Italian plays 

lit was reproduced by the Hakluyt vSociety to accompany TAe 
Voyages and Workes of John Davis the Navigator', ed. Captain A. H. 
Markham, 1880. Cf. Mr. Coote's note on the Nezv Map, Ixxxv- 
xcv. A paper on the subject by Mr. Coote also appears in N'ezv Shak- 
spere Society'' s Transactions, 1877-9, pt. i. pp. 88-100. 

^ Diafy, Camden Soc. p. 18; the Elizabethan Stage Society 
repeated the play on the same stage on February 10, 11, and 12, 1897. 



2l8 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

entitled ' Gl' Inganni ' (' The Cheats '), and a third 
called ' Gl' Ingannati ' ('The Cheated'), bear resem- 
blance to ' Twelfth Night' It is possible that Shake- 
speare had read the last, which was based on 
Bandello's novel of Nicuola,^ was first published at 
Siena in 1538, was translated into French in 1543, 
and became popular in both Italy and France. But in 
all probability he drew the story solely from the 'His- 
toric of Apolonius and Silla,' which was related in 
'Richehis Farewell to Militarie Profession ' (-1581). 
The author of that volume, Barnabe Riche, translated 
the tale either direct from Bandello's Italian novel 
or from the French rendering of Bandello's work in 
Belief crest's ' Histoires Tragiques.' Romantic pathos, 
as in ' Much Ado,' is the dominant note of the main 
plot of 'Twelfth Night,' but Shakespeare neutralises 
the tone of sadness by his mirthful portrayal of 
Malvolio, Sir Toby Belch, Sir Andrew Aguecheek, 
Fabian, the clown Feste, and Maria, all of whom are 
his own creations. The ludicrous gravity of Malvolio 
proved exceptionally popular on the stage. 

In 1 60 1 Shakespeare made a new departure by 
drawing a plot from North's noble translation of 
'Plutarch's Lives.' ^ Plutarch is the king of biogra- 
phers, and the deference which Shakespeare paid his 
work by adhering to the phraseology wherever it was 
practicable illustrates his literary discrimination. On 
Plutarch's lives of Julius Caesar, Brutus, and Antony, 
Shakespeare based his historical tragedy of 'Julius 

1 Bandello's Novelle^ ii. 36. 

2 First published in 1579; 2nd ed. 1595. 



MATURITY OF GENIUS 219 

Caesar.' Weever, in 1601, in his 'Mirror of Martyrs,' 
plainly refers to the masterly speech in the Forum at 
. Cassar's funeral which Shakespeare put into 

Cassar,' Antony's mouth. There is no su2f2:estion of 
the speech in rlutarch; hence the composi- 
tion of 'Julius Caesar' may be held to have preceded 
the issue of Weever's book in 1601. The general 
topic was already familiar on the stage. Polonius told 
Hamlet how, when he was at the university, he * did 
enact Julius Caesar ; he was kill'd in the Capitol : 
Brutus kill'd him.' ^ A play of the same title was 
known as early as 1589, and was acted in 1594 by 
Shakespeare's company. Shakespeare's piece is a 
penetrating study of poHtical life, and, although the 
murder and funeral of Caesar form the central episode 
and not the climax, the tragedy is thoroughly well 
planned and balanced. Caesar is ironically depicted 
in his dotage. The characters of Brutus, Antony, and 
Cassius, the real heroes of the action, are exhibited 
with faultless art. The fifth act, which presents the 
battle of Philippi in progress, proves ineffective on 
the stage, but the reader never relaxes his interest in 
the fortunes of the vanquished Brutus, whose death 
is the catastrophe. 

While ' Julius Caesar ' was winning its first laurels 
on the stage, the fortunes of the London theatres were 
menaced by two manifestations of unreasoning preju- 
dice on the part of the public. The earlier manifes- 
tation, although speciously the more serious, was in 
effect innocuous. The puritans of the city of London 

^ Hamlet^ in, ii. 109-10. 



220 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

had long agitated for the suppression of all theatrical 
performances, and it seemed as if the agitators tri- 
umphed when they induced the Privy Council on June 
22, 1600, to issue to the officers of the Corporation of 
London and to the j ustices of the peace of Middlesex and 
Surrey an order forbidding the maintenance of more 
than two playhouses — one in Middlesex (Alleyn's 
newly erected playhouse, the' Fortune' in Cripplegate), 
and the other in Surrey (the ' Globe ' on the Bankside). 
The contemplated restriction would have deprived very 
many actors of employment, and driven others to seek 
a precarious livelihood in the provinces. Happily, 
disaster was averted by the failure of the municipal 
authorities and the magistrates of Surrey and Middle- 
sex to make the order operative. All the London 
theatres that were already in existence went on their 
way unchecked.! 

More calamitous was a temporary reverse of for- 
tune which Shakespeare's company, in common with 
The strife the Other Companies of adult actors, suffered 
adXand soon aftcrwards at the hands, not of fanatical 
boy actors, encmics of the drama, but of playgoers who 
were its avowed supporters. The company of boy- 

^ On December 31, 1601, the Lords of the Council sent letters to the 
Lord Mayor of London and to the magistrates of Surrey and Middlesex 
expressing their surprise that no steps had yet been taken to limit the 
number of playhouses in accordance with ' our order set down and 
prescribed about a year and a half since.' But nothing followed, and 
no more was heard officially of the Council's order until 1619, when the 
Corporation of London remarked on its practical abrogation at the 
same time as they directed the suppression (which was not carried out) 
of the Blackfriars Theatre. All the documents on this subject are printed 
from the Privy Council Register by Halliwell-Phillipps, i. 307-9. 



MATURITY OF GENIUS 221 

actors, chiefly recruited from the choristers of the 
Chapel Royal, and known as * the Children of the 
Chapel,' had since 1597 been installed at the new 
theatre in Blackfriars, and after 1600 the fortunes of 
the veterans, who occupied rival stages, were put in 
jeopardy by the extravagant outburst of public favour 
that the boys' performances evoked. In * Hamlet,' 
the play which followed ' Julius Caesar,' Shakespeare 
pointed out the perils of the situation.^ The adult 
actors, Shakespeare asserted, were prevented from per- 
forming in London through no falling off in their 
efficiency, but by the * late innovation' of the children's 
vogue.^ They were compelled to go on tour in the 
provinces, at the expense of their revenues and repu- 
tation, because ' an aery [_z.e. nest] of children, little 
eyases [_i.e. young hawks],' dominated the theatrical 
world, and monopolised public applause. 'These 
are now the fashion,' the dramatist lamented,^ and he 

1 The passage, act 11. sc. ii. 348-394, which deals in ample detail 
with the subject, only appears in the folio version of 1623. In the 
First Quarto a very curt reference is made to the misfortunes of the 
' tragedians of the city ' : 

Y' faith, my lord, noveltie carries it away. 

For the principal publike audience that 

Came to them are turned to private playes 

And to the humours of children. 

' Private playes ' were plays acted by amateurs, with whom the 
* Children ' might well be classed. 

2 All recent commentators follow Steevens in interpreting the * late 
innovation' as the Order of the Privy Council of June 1600, restricting 
the number of the London playhouses to two; but that order, which 
was never put in force, in no way affected the actors' fortunes. The 
First Quarto's reference to the perils attaching to the ' noveltie ' of the 
boys' performances indicates the true meaning. 
8 Hamlet^ ii. ii. 349-64. 



222 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

made the topic the text of a reflection on the fickle- 
ness of public taste : 

Hamlet. Do the boys carry it away ? 

RosENCRANTZ. Ay, that they do, my lord, Hercules and his load too. 

Hamlet. It is not very strange; for my uncle is King of Denmark, 
and those that would make mows at him while my father lived, give 
twenty, forty, fifty, a hundred ducats apiece for his picture in little. 

Jealousies in the ranks of the dramatists accen- 
tuated the actors* difficulties. Ben Jonson was, at 
the end of the sixteenth century, engaged in a fierce 
personal quarrel with two of his fellow-dramatists, 
Marston and Dekker. The adult actors generally- 
avowed sympathy with Jonson's foes. Jonson, by 
way of revenge, sought an offensive alliance with ' the 
Children of the Chapel' Under careful tuition the 
boys proved capable of performing much the same 
pieces as the men. To ' the children ' Jonson offered 
in 1600 his comical satire of * Cvnthia's Revels,' in 
which he held up to ridicule Dekker, Marston, and 
their actor-friends. The play, when acted by * the 
children ' at the Blackfriars Theatre, was warmly 
welcomed by the audience. Next year Jonson 
repeated his manoeuvre with greater effect. He 
learnt that Marston and Dekker were conspiring with 
the actors of Shakespeare's company to attack him 
in a piece called ' Satiro-Mastix, or the Untrussing of 
the Humorous Poet' He anticipated their design 
by producing,. again with 'the Children of the Chapel,' 
his * Poetaster,' which was throughout a venomous 
invective against his enemies — dramatists and actors 
alike. Shakespeare's company retorted by producing 
Dekker and Marston's 'Satiro-Mastix' at the Globe 



MATURITY OF GENIUS 223 

Theatre next year. But Jonson's action had given 
new life to the vogue pi the children. Playgoers took 
sides in the struggle, and their attention was for a 
season riveted, to the exclusion of topics more ger- 
mane to their province, on the actors' and dramatists' 
boisterous war of personalities.^ 

In his detailed references to the conflict in 

* Hamlet' Shakespeare protested against the abusive 
Shake- Comments on the men-actors of * the common 
speare's stages ' or public theatres which were put into 

references 1 

to the the children's mouths. Rosencrantz declared 

srugge. ^^^^ ^^^ children 'so berattle [_i.e. assail] 
the common stages — so they call them — that many 
wearing rapiers are afraid of goose-quills, and dare 
scarce come thither \^i.e. to the public theatres].' 
Hamlet in pursuit of the theme pointed out that the 

1 At the moment offensive personalities seemed to have infected all 
the London theatres. On May 10, 1601, the Privy Council called the 
attention of the Middlesex magistrates to the abuse covertly levelled by 
the actors of the * Curtain ' at gentlemen ' of good desert and quality, 
and directed the magistrates to examine all plays before they were 
produced (^Privy Council Register). Jonson subsequently issued an 

* apologetical dialogue ' (appended to printed copies of the Poetaster) , 
in which he somewhat truculently qualified his hostility to the 
players : 

Now for the players 'tis true I tax'd them 

And yet but some, and those so sparingly 

As all the rest might have sat still unquestioned, 

Had they but had the wit or conscience 

To think well of themselves.. But impotent they 

Thought each man's vice belonged to their whole tribe; 

And much good do it them. What they have done against me 

I am not moved with, if it gave them meat 

Or got them clothes, 'tis v/ell; that wao their end. 

Only amongst them I am sorry for 

Some better natures by the rest so drawn 

To run in that vile line. 



224 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

writers who encouraged the vogue of the * child- 
actors ' did them a poor service, because when the 
boys should reach men's estate they would run the 
risk, if they continued on the stage, of the same insults 
and neglect which now threatened their seniors. 

Hamlet. What are they children? Who maintains 'em? how are 
they escoted [2.<?. paid] ? Will they pursue the quality \^i.e. the actor's 
profession] no longer than they can sing? Will they not say afterwards, 
it they should grow themselves to common players — as it is most like, if 
their means are no better — their writers do them wrong to make them 
exclaim against their own succession? 

RosENCRANTz. Faith, there has been much to do on both sides, 
and the nation holds it no sin to tarre [z.^. incite] them to controversy : 
there was for a while no money bid for argument, unless the poet and 
the player went to cuffs in the question. 

Hamlet. Is it possible? 

GuiLDENSTERN. O, there has been much throwing about of 
brains ! 

Shakespeare clearly favoured the adult actors in 
their rivalry with the boys, but he wrote more like a 
disinterested spectator than an active partisan when 
he made specific reference to the strife between the 
poet Ben Jonson and the players. In the prologue 
to * Troilus and Cressida ' which he penned in 1603, 
he warned his hearers, with obvious allusion to Ben 
Jonson's battles, that he hesitated to identify himself 
with either actor or poet.^ Passages in Ben Jonson's 
* Poetaster,' moreover, pointedly suggest that Shake- 
speare cultivated so assiduously an attitude of neutra- 
lity that Jonson acknowledged him to be qualified for 
the r61e of peacemaker. The gentleness of disposition 

1 See p. 237, no^e i, ad Jin, 



MATURITY OF GENIUS 225 

with which Shakespeare was invariably credited by his 
friends would have well fitted him for such an office. 
Jonson figures personally in the ' Poetaster ' under 
the name of Horace. Episodically Horace and his 
jonson's frieuds, Tibullus and Gallus, eulogise the 
' Pc)etaster.' -^qj-j^ ^^^^ gcnius of another character, Virgil, 
in terms so closely resembling those which Jonson 
is known to have applied to Shakespeare that they 
may be regarded as intended to apply to him (act v. 
sc. i). Jonson points out that Virgil, by his pene- 
trating intuition, achieved the great effects which 
others laboriously sought to reach through rules 
of art. 

His learning labours not the school-like gloss 
That most consists of echoing words and terms . , . 
Nor any long or far-fetched circumstance — 
Wrapt in the curious generalities of arts — 
But a direct and analytic sum 
Of all the worth and first effects of arts. 
And for his poesy, 'tis so rammed with life 
That it shall gather strength of life with being, 
And live hereafter, more admired than now. 

Tibullus gives Virgil equal credit for having in his 
writings touched with telling truth upon every vicis- 
situde of human existence. 

That which he hath writ 
Is with such judgment laboured and distilled 
Through all the needful uses of our lives 
That, could a man remember but his lines, 
He should not touch at any serious point 
But he might breathe his spirit out of him. 

Finally, Virgil in the play is nominated by Caesar 
to act as judge between Horace and his libellers, and 

Q 



226 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

he advises the administration of purging pills to the 
offenders. That course of treatment is adopted with 
satisfactory results.^ 

As against this interpretation, one contemporary 
witness has been held to testify that Shakespeare 
stemmed the tide of Jonson's embittered activity by no 
peace-making interposition, but by joining his foes, and 
by administering to him, with their aid, the identical 
course of medicine which in the ' Poetaster ' is meted 
out to his enemies. In the same year (1601) as the 
* Poetaster ' was produced, * The Return from Parnas- 
sus ' — a third piece in a trilogy of plays — was 'acted 
by the students in St. John's College, Cambridge.' 
In this piece, as in its two predecessors, Shakespeare 
received, both as a playwright and a poet, high com- 
mendation, although his poems were judged to reflect 
somewhat too largely * love's lazy foolish languish- 
ment.' The actor Burbage was introduced in his 
own name instructing an aspirant to the actor's 
profession in the part of Richard the Third, and the 
familiar lines from Shakespeare's play — 

Now is the winter of our discontent 

Made glorious summer by this sun of York — 

are recited by the pupil as part of his lesson. Sub- 
sequently in a prose dialogue between Shakespeare's 
fellow-actors Burbage and Kempe, Kempe remarks 
of university dramatists, ' Why, here's our fellow 

^ The proposed identification of Virgil in the Poetaster with 
Chapman has little to recommend it. Chapman's literary work did 
not justify the commendations which were bestowed on Virgil in the 
play. 



MATURITY OF GENIUS 22/ 

Shakespeare puts them all down ; aye, and Ben Jon- 
son, too. O ! that Ben Jonson is a pestilent fellow. 
He brought up Horace, giving the poets a pill ; but 
our fellow Shakespeare hath given him a purge that 
made him bewray his credit.' Burbage adds : ' He is 
a shrewd fellow indeed.' This perplexing passage 
has been held to mean that Shakespeare took a 
decisive part against Jonson in the controversy with 
Dekker and Dekker's actor friends. But such a con- 
clusion is nowhere corroborated, and seems 

Shake- 

speare's to be Confuted by the eulogies of Virgil 
partisan- in the ' Poctaster ' and- by the general hand- 
^^^P' ling of the theme in ' Hamlet.' The words 

quoted from . * The Return from Parnassus ' hardly 
admit of a literal interpretation. Probably the 
' purge ' that Shakespeare was alleged by the author 
of * The Return from Parnassus ' to have given Jonson 
meant no more than that Shakespeare had signally 
outstripped Jonson in popular esteem. As the author 
of 'Julius Caesar,' he had just proved his command of 
topics that were peculiarly suited to Jonson's vein,i 



^ The most scornful criticism that Jonson is known to have passed 
on any composition by Shakespeare was aimed at a passage in Julius 
Ccesar, and as Jonson's attack is barely justifiable on literary grounds, 
it is fair to assume that the play was distasteful to him from other con- 
siderations. ' Many times,' Jonson wrote of Shakespeare in his 
Timber^ ' hee fell into those things [which] could not escape laughter: 
As when hee said in the person of CcBsar, one speaking to him \i.e. 
Caesar]; Ccesar, thozi dost me ivrong. Hee [z'.i?. Caesar] replyed : Ccesar 
did 7iever wrong, butt with just cause: and such like, which were 
ridiculous.' Jonson derisively quoted the same passage in the induc- 
tion to The Staple of Neivs (1625) : ' Cry you mercy, you did not wrong 
but with just cause.' Possibly the words that were ascribed by Jonson 



228 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

and had in fact outrun his churHsh comrade on his 
own ground. 

At any rate, in the tragedy that Shakespeare 
brought out in the year following the production of 
'Julius Caesar/ he finally left Jonson and all friends 
and foes lagging far behind both in achievement and 
reputation. This new exhibition of the force of 
his genius re-established, too, the ascendency of the 
adult actors who interpreted his work, and the boys' 
supremacy was quickly brought to an end. In 1602 
Shakespeare produced 'Hamlet,' 'that piece of his 
which most kindled English hearts.' The story of the 
'Hamlet,* Prince of Denmark had been popular on the 
1602. stage as early as 1589 in a lost dramatic ver- 

sion by another writer — doubtless Thomas Kyd, whose 
tragedies of blood, ' The Spanish Tragedy ' and ' Jero- 

to Shakespeare's character of Ccesar appeared in the original version of 
the play, but owing perhaps to Jonson's captious criticism they do not 
figure in the Folio version, the sole version that has reached us. The only 
words there that correspond with Jonson's quotation are Caesar's remark : 

Know, Csesar doth not wrong, nor without cause 
Will he be satisfied 

(ill. i. 47-8). The rhythm and sense seem to require the reinsertion 
after the word 'wrong' of the phrase 'but with just cause,' which 
Jonson needlessly reprobated. Leonard Digges (1588-1635), one 
of Shakespeare's admiring critics, emphasises the superior popu- 
larity of Shakespeare's Julius Ccesar in the theatre to Ben Jonson's 
Roman play of Catiline, in his eulogistic lines on Shakespeare 
(publishecf after Digges's death in the 1640 edition of Shakespeare's 

Poems) : 

So have I seen when Caesar would appear, 
And on the stage at half-sword parley were 
Brutus and Cassius — oh, how the audience 
Were ravish'd, with what wonder they went thence 
When some new day they would not brook a line 
Of tedious, though well laboured, Catiline. 



MATURITY OF GENIUS 229 

nimo,' long held the Elizabethan stage. To that lost 
version of ' Hamlet ' Shakespeare's tragedy certainly 
owed much.i The story was also accessible in the 
' Histoires Tragiques ' of Belleforest, who adapted it 
from the * Historia Danica ' of Saxo Grammaticus.^ 



1 1 wrote on this point in the article on Thomas Kyd in the 
Dictionary of National Biography (vol. xxxi) : ' The argument in 
favour of Kyd's authorship of a pre-Shakespearean play (now lost) on 
the subject of Hamlet deserves attention. Nash in 1589, when 
describing [in his preface to Menaphon'\ the typical literary hack, 
who at almost every point suggests Kyd, notices that in addition to 
his other accomplishments " he will afford you whole Hamlets, I 
should say handfuls of tragical speeches." Other references in popular 
tracts and plays of like date prove that in an early tragedy concern- 
ing Hamlet there was a ghost who cried repeatedly, " Hamlet, 
revenge ! " and that this expression took rank in Elizabethan slang be- 
side the vernacular quotations from [Kyd's sanguinary tragedy of] 
Jeronimo, such as " What outcry calls me from my naked bed," and 
" Beware, Hieronimo, go by, go by." The resemblance between the 
stories of Ha7nlet and Jeronimo suggests that the former would have 
supplied Kyd with a congenial plot. In Jeronimo a father seeks to 
avenge his son's murder ; in Hamlet the theme is the same with the 
position of father and son reversed. In Jeronimo the avenging father 
resolves to reach his end by arranging for the performance of a play in 
the presence of those whom he suspects of the murder of his son, and 
there is good ground for crediting the lost tragedy of Hamlet with a 
similar play-scene. Shakespeare's debt to the lost tragedy is a matter 
of conjecture, but the stilted speeches of the play-scene in his Hamlet 
read like intentional parodies of Kyd's bombastic efforts in The Spanish 
Tragedy, and it is quite possible that they were directly suggested by 
an almost identical episode in a lost Hamlet by the same author.' 
Shakespeare elsewhere shows acquaintance with Kyd's work. He 
places in the mouth of Kit Sly in the Taming of the Shrew the current 
phrase ' Go by, Jeronimy,' from The Spanish Tragedy. Shakespeare 
quotes verbatim a line from the same piece in Much Ado about Nothing 
(i. i. 271) : * In time the savage bull doth bear the yoke ' ; but Kyd 
practically borrowed that line from Watson's Passionate Centurie (No. 
xlvii), where Shakespeare may have met it. 

2 Cf. Gericke und Max Moltke, Hamlet-Quellen, Leipzig, 1881. 



230 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

No English translation of Belleforest's * Hystorie of 
Hamblet' appeared before 1608; Shakespeare doubt- 
less read it in the French. But his authorities give 
little hint of what was to emerge from his study of 
them. 

Burbage created the title-part in Shakespeare's 
tragedy, and its success on the stage led to the play's 
publication immediately afterwards. The bibliography 
of ' Hamlet ' offers a puzzling problem. On July 26, 
1602, 'A Book called the Revenge of Hamlet, Prince 
The pro- of Denmark, as it was lately acted by the 
puWica-^'^ Lord Chamberlain his Servants,' was en- 
tion. tered on the Stationers' Company's Registers 

by the printer James Roberts, and it was published in 
quarto next year by N[icholas] L[ing] and John 
TrundelL^ The title-page stated that the piece had 

The story was absorbed into Scandinavian mythology : of. Ambales- 
Saga, edited by Mr. Israel Gollancz, 1898. 

^ James Roberts and Nicholas Ling, two of the three promoters of the 
publication of the first quarto of Hamlet, and the sole promoters of the 
publication of the second quarto, were well-established members of the 
publishing trade. Roberts, who was printer and publisher of ' the players' 
bills,' had been concerned in 1600 in the surreptitious publication of 
Tittcs Andronicus (?,QQ p. ^<^^,oi\h^ Merchant of Venice (seep. 73), and 
of the Midsummer Night"" s Dream (see p. 165). He obtained a license 
for the publication of Troilus and Cressida in 1603 (see p. 231). Ling, 
a bookseller and publisher, not a printer, had taken up his freedom as 
a stationer in 1579, and was called into the livery in 1598. He was 
himself a man of letters, having designed a series of collected 
aphorisms in four volumes, of which the second was the well-known 
Palladis Tamia (1598) by Francis Meres. Ling compiled and pub- 
lished both the first volume of the series called Politeuphetda (1597), 
and the third called Wifs Theatre of the Little PVor Id (i^gg). In 1607 
he temporarily acquired some interest in the publication of Shake- 
speare's Z(?z'^VZ<3:<5^z^rVZ(3j'^' and Romeo and Jtdiet (Arber, iii. T^-yj, 365). 



MATURITY OF GENIUS 23 1 

been * acted divers times in the city of London, as 
also in the two Universities of Cambridge and Ox- 
ford and elsewhere.' The text here appeared 
Quarto, in a rough and imperfect state. In all 
probability it was a piratical and carelessly 
transcribed copy of Shakespeare's first draft of the 
play, in which he drew largely on the older piece. 

A revised version, printed from a more complete 
and accurate manuscript, was published in 1604 as 
• The Tragical History of Hamlet Prince of Denmark, 
by William Shakespeare, newly imprinted and en- 
larged to almost as much again as it was, according 
to the true and perfect copy.' This was printed by 
I[ames] R[oberts] for the publisher N[icholas] L[ing]. 
The concluding words — ' according to the true and 
_ perfect copy ' — of the title-page of the 

Quarto, Sccond Ouarto were intended to stamp its 
1604. , ^ . . , V 

predecessor as surreptitious and unauthen- 
tic. But it is clear that the Second Quarto was not a 
perfect version of the play. It was itself printed from 
a copy which had been curtailed for acting purposes. 
A third version (long the texhts receptits) figured 
The Folio in the Folio of 1623. Here many passages. 
Version. ^^^^ ^^ j^^ found in the quartos, appear for 

the first time, but a few others that appear in the 

The third promoter of the first quarto of Hamlet, John Trundell, was 
a stationer of small account. He took up his freedom as a stationer on 
October 29, 1597, but the Hamlet oi 1603 was the earliest volume on 
the title-page of which he figured. He had no other connection with 
Shakespeare's works. Ben Jonson derisively introduced Trundell's 
name as that of a notorious dealer in broadside ballads into Every 
Man in his Humour (i. ii, 63, folio edition, i6i6). 



232 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

quartos are omitted. The Folio text probably came 
nearest to the original manuscript ; but it, too, followed 
an acting copy which had been abbreviated some- 
what less drastically than the Second Quarto and in a 
different fashion. i Theobald in his * Shakespeare 
Restored' (1726) made the first scholarly attempt to 
form a text from a collation of the First Folio with 
the Second Quarto, and Theobald's text with further 
embellishments by Sir Thomas Hanmer, Edward 
Capell, and the Cambridge editors of 1866, is now 
generally adopted. 

'Hamlet' was the only drama by Shakespeare 
that was acted in his lifetime at the two Universities. 
It has since attracted more attention from actors, 
playgoers, and readers of all capacities than any other 
of Shakespeare's plays. Its world-wide popularity 
p from its author's day to our own, when it is 

larity of _ as warmly welcomed in the theatres of France 
and Germany as in those of England and 
America, is the most striking of the many testimonies 
to the eminence of Shakespeare's dramatic instinct. 
At a first glance there seems little in the play to 
attract the uneducated or the unreflecting. ' Hamlet' 
is mainly a psychological effort, a study of the reflec- 
tive temperament in excess. The action develops 
slowly ; at times there is no movement at all. The 
piece is the longest of Shakespeare's plays, reaching 

1 Cf. Hamlet — parallel texts of the first and second quarto, and 
first folio — ed. Wilhelm Vietor, Marburg, 1891 ; The Devonshire 
Hamlets, i860, parallel texts of the two quartos edited by Mr, Sam 
Timmins ; Hamlet, ed. George Macdonald, 1885, a study with the text 
of the folio. 



MATURITY OF GENIUS 233 

a total of over 3,900 lines.^ At the same time 
the total length of Hamlet's speeches far exceeds 
that of those allotted by Shakespeare to any other 
of his characters. Humorous relief is, it is true, 
effectively supplied to the tragic theme by Polonius 
and the grave-diggers, and if the topical references to 
contemporary theatrical history (11. ii. 350-89) could 
only count on an appreciative reception from an 
Elizabethan audience, the pungent censure of actors' 
perennial defects is calculated to catch the ear of the 
average playgoer of all ages. But it is not to these 
subsidiary features that the universality of the play's 
vogue can be attributed. It is the intensity of 
interest which Shakespeare contrives to excite in 
the character of the hero that explains the position 
of the play in popular esteem. The play's un- 
rivalled power of attraction lies in the pathetic 
fascination exerted on minds of almost every calibre 
by the central figure — a high-born youth of chivalric 
instincts and finely developed intellect, who, when 
stirred to avenge in action a desperate private wrong, 
is foiled by introspective workings of the brain that 
paralyse the will. 

Although the difficulties of determining the date 

of 'Troilus and Cressida' are very great, 
and there are many grounds for assigning its 

composition to the early days of 1603. In- 
1599 Dekker and Chettle were engaged by Henslowe 

'^ Hmnlet is thus some three hundred lines longer than Richard III 
— the play by Shakespeare that approaches it most closely in nu- 
merical strength of lines. 



234 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

to prepare for the Earl of Nottingham's company — a 
rival of Shakespeare's company — a play of ' Troilus 
and Cressida,' of which no trace survives. It doubtless 
suggested the topic to Shakespeare. On February 7, 
1602-3, James Roberts obtained a license for 'the 
booke of Troilus and Cresseda as yt is acted by my 
Lord Chamberlens men,' i.e. Shakespeare's company.^ 
Roberts printed the Second Quarto of ' Hamlet ' and 
others of Shakespeare's plays ; but his effort to 
pubHsh ' Troilus ' proved abortive owing to the in- 
terposition of the players. Roberts's * book ' was 
probably Shakespeare's play. The metrical charac- 
teristics of Shakespeare's 'Troilus and Cressida' — 
the regularity of the blank verse — powerfully con- 
firm the date of composition which Roberts's license 
suggests. Six years later, however, on January 28, 
1608-9, a new license for the issue of ' a booke called 
the history of Troylus and Cressida ' was granted to 
other publishers, Richard Bonian and Henry Walley,^ 
and these publishers, more fortunate than Roberts, 
soon printed a quarto with Shakespeare's full name 
as author. The text seems fairly authentic, but 
exceptional obscurity attaches to the circumstances 
of the publication. Some copies of the book bear 
an ordinary type of title-page stating that the piece 
was printed 'as it was acted by the King's majesties 
servants at the Globe.' But in other copies, which 
differ in no way in regard to the text of the play, 
there was substituted for this title-page a more pre- 

^Arber's Transcript of the Stationers' Registers, iii. 226. 
'^ lb. iii. 400. 



MATURITY OF GENIUS 235 

tentious announcement running : * The famous His"- 
torie of Troylus and Cresseid, excellently expressing 
the beginning of their loues with the conceited wooing 
of Pandarus, prince of Lacia.' After this pompous 
title-page there was inserted, for the first and only 
time in the case of a play by Shakespeare that was 
published in his lifetime, an advertisement or preface. 
In this interpolated page an anonymous scribe, writ- 
ing in the name of the publishers, paid bombastic and 
high-flown compliments to Shakespeare as a writer 
of 'comedies,' and defiantly boasted that the 'grand 
possessers' — i.e. the owners — of the manuscript 
deprecated its publication. By way of enhancing the 
value of what were obviously stolen wares, it was 
falsely added that the piece was new and unacted. 
This address was possibly the brazen reply of the 
publishers to a more than usually emphatic protest 
on the part of players or dramatist against the 
printing of the piece. The editors of the Folio 
evinced distrust of the Quarto edition by printing 
their text from a different copy showing many devia- 
tions, which were not always for the better. 

The work, which in point of construction shows 
signs of haste, and in style is exceptionally unequal, 
is the least attractive of the efforts of Shakespeare's 
middle life. The story is based on a romantic legend 
^ of the Troian war, which is of mediaeval 

Treatment ^ ^ •' 

of the origin. Shakespeare had possibly read Chap- 

theme. . r TT 5 TT 1 J -I 

man s translation of Homer s ' Iliad, but he 
owed his plot to Chaucer's 'Troilus and Cresseid' 
and Lydgate's *Troy Book.' In defiance of his 



236 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

authorities he presented Cressida as a heartless co- 
quette ; the poets who had previously treated her story 
— Boccaccio, Chaucer, Lydgate, and Robert Henry- 
son — had imagined her as a tender-hearted, if frail, 
beauty, with claims on their pity rather than on their 
scorn. But Shakespeare's innovation is dramatically 
effective, and accords with strictly moral canons. 
The charge frequently brought against the dramatist 
that in 'Troilus and Cressida' he cynically invested 
the Greek heroes of classical antiquity with con- 
temptible characteristics is ill supported by the text 
of the play. Ulysses, Nestor, and Agamemnon figure 
in Shakespeare's play as brave generals and saga- 
cious statesmen, and in their speeches Shakespeare 
concentrated a marvellous wealth of pithily expressed 
philosophy, much of which has fortunately obtained 
proverbial currency. Shakespeare's conception of 
the Greeks followed traditional lines except in the 
case of Achilles, whom he transforms into a brutal 
coward. And that portrait quite legitimately inter- 
preted the selfish, unreasoning, and exorbitant pride 
with which the warrior was credited by Homer and 
his imitators. 

Shakespeare's treatment of his theme cannot 
therefore be fairly construed, as some critics construe 
it, into a petty-minded protest against the honour 
paid to the ancient Greeks and to the form and sen- 
timent of their hterature by more learned dramatists 
of the day, like Ben Jonson and Chapman. Although 
Shakespeare knew the Homeric version of the Trojan 
war, he worked in ' Troilus and Cressida ' upon a 



MATURITY OF GENIUS 237 

mediaeval romance, which was practically uninfluenced 
either for good or evil by the classical spirit.^ 

1 Less satisfactory is the endeavour that has been made by Mr. F. G. 
Fleay and Mr. George Wyndham to treat Troilus and Cressida as Shake- 
speare's contribution to the embittered controversy of 1601-2, between 
Jonson on the one hand and Marston and Dekker and their actor- 
fiiends on the other hand, and to represent the play as a pronounce- 
ment against Jonson. According to this fanciful view, Shakespeare 
held up Jonson to savage ridicule in Ajax, while in Thersites he 
denounced Marston, despite Marston's intermittent antagonism to 
Jonson, which entitled him to freedom from attack by Jonson's 
foes. The appearance of the word 'mastic' in the line (i. iii. 73) 
'When rank Thersites opes his mastic jaws' is treated as proof 
of Shakespeare's identification of Thersites with Marston, who 
used the pseudonym ' Therio-mastix ' in his Scourge of Villainy. 
It would be as reasonable to identify him with Dekker, who 
wrote the greater part of Satiro-mastix. 'Mastic' is an adjective 
formed without recondite significance from ' mastic,' i.e. the gum com- 
monly used at the time for stopping decayed teeth (cf. Lyly's Mydas, III. 
Yi.adfin^. No hypothesis of a polemical intention is needed to account 
for Shakespeare's conception of Ajax or Thersites. There is no trait in 
either character as depicted by Shakespeare which a reading of Chap- 
man's iy<5/«(fr would fail to suggest. The controversial interpretation of 
the play is in conflict with chronology (for Troilus cannot, on any show- 
ing, be assigned to the period of the war between Jonson and Dekker, 
in 1 601-2), and it seems confuted by the facts and arguments already 
adduced in the discussion of the theatrical conflict (see pp. 220-227). ^^ 
more direct disproof be needed, it may be found in Shakespeare's 
prologue to Troilus, where there is a good-humoured and expressly 
pacific allusion to the polemical aims of Jonson's Poetaster. Jonson 
had introduced into his play ' an artned prologue ' on account, he 
asserted, of his enemies' menaces. Shakespeare, after describing in his 
prologue to Troilus the progress of the Trojan war before his story 
opened, added that his ' prologue ' presented itself ' ar?nW,^ not to 
champion ' author's pen or actor's voice,' but simply to announce in a 
guise befitting the warlike subject-matter that the play began in the 
middle of the conflict between Greek and Trojan, and not at the begin- 
ning. These words of Shakespeare put out of court any interpretation 
of Shakespeare's play that would represent it as a contribution to the 
theatrical controversy. 



238 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

Despite the association of Shakespeare's company 
with the rebellion of 1601, and its difficulties with the 
children of ^ the Chapel Royal, he and his fellow-actors 
retained their hold on Court favour till the close of 
Oueen Elizabeth's reign. As late as February 2, 
Elizabeth's 1603, the Company entertained the dying 
March 24, Quecn at Richmond. Her death on March 
°^' 24, 1603, drew from Shakespeare's early 

eulogist, Chettle, a vain appeal to him under the 
fanciful name of Melicert, to 

Drop from his honied muse one sable teare, 
To mourne her death that graced his desert, 
And to his laies opened her royal eare.^ 

But, except on sentimental grounds, the Queen's death 
justified no lamentation on the part of Shakespeare. 
On the withdrawal of one royal patron he and his 
friends at once found another, who proved far more 
liberal and appreciative. 

On May 19, 1603, James I, very soon after his 
accession, extended to Shakespeare and other mem- 
bers of the Lord Chamberlain's company a very 
marked and valuable recognition. To them he 
granted under royal letters patent a license 'freely 
to use and exercise the arte and facultie of playing 
comedies, tragedies, histories, enterludes, moralls, 
pastoralles, stage-plaies, and such other like as they 
have already studied, or hereafter shall use or studie 
as well for the recreation of our loving subjectes 
as for our solace and pleasure, when we shall thinke 

^ England'' s Mourning Garment^ 1603, sig. D. 3. 



MATURITY OF GENIUS 239 

good to see them during our pleasure.' The Globe 
Theatre was noted as the customary scene of their 
labours, but permission was granted to them to per- 
form in the town-hall or moot-hall of any country 
James I's town. Nine actors are named. Lawrence 
patronage, pietchcr stauds first on the list; he had 
already performed before James in Scotland in 1599 
and 1601. Shakespeare comes second and Burbage 
third. The company to which they belonged was 
thenceforth styled the King's company ; its members 
became ' the King's Servants ' and they took rank with 
the Grooms of the Chamber.^ Shakespeare's plays 
were thenceforth repeatedly performed in James's 
presence, and there is a credible tradition that James 
wrote to Shakespeare * an amicable letter ' in his own 
hand, which was long in the possession of Sir William 
D'Avenant.^ 

In the autumn and winter of 1603 the prevalence 
of the plague led to the closing of the theatres in 
London. The King's players were compelled to 

^ At the same time the Earl of Worcester's company M'as taken 
into the Queen's patronage, and its members were known as 'the 
Queen's servants,' while the Earl of Nottingham's company was taken 
into the patronage of the Prince of Wales, and its members were 
known as the»Prince's servants. This extended patronage of actors by 
the royal family was noticed as especially honourable to the King by 
one of his contemporary panegyrists, Gilbert Dugdale, in his Time 
Triumphant, 1604, sig. B. 

2 This circumstance was first set forth in print, on the testimony of 
* a credible person then living,' by Bernard Lintot the bookseller, in 
the preface of the edition of Shakespeare's poems in 1710. Oldys 
suggested that the ' credible person ' who saw the letter while in 
D'Avenant's possession was John Sheffield, Duke of Buckingham 
(1648-1721). 



240 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

make a prolonged tour in the provinces, which 
entailed some loss of income. For two months from 
the third week in October, the Court was tempo- 
rarily installed at Wilton, the residence of William 
Herbert, third Earl of Pembroke, and late in November 
the company was summoned by the royal officers to 
perform in the royal presence. The actors travelled 
from Mortlake to Salisbury * unto the Courte afore- 
saide,' and their performance took place at Wilton 
House on December 2. They received next day 

* upon the Councells warrant ' the large sum of 30/. 

* by way of his majesties reward.' ^ Many other 
gracious marks of royal favour followed. On March 
15, 1604, Shakespeare and eight other actors of the 
company walked from the Tower of London to West- 
minster in the procession which accompanied the 
King on his formal entry into London. Each actor 
received four and a half yards of scarlet cloth to wear 
as a cloak on the occasion, and in the document 
authorising the grant Shakespeare's name stands first 



1 The entry, which appears in the accounts of the Treasurer of the 
Chamber, was first printed in 1842 in Cunningham's Extracts from the 
Accounts of the Revels at Court, p. xxxiv. A comparison of Cunning- 
ham's transcript with the original in the Public Record Office (^Audit 
Office — Declared Accounts — Treasurer of the Chamber, bundle '^%'^^ 
roll 41) shows that it is accurate. The Earl of Pembroke was in no way 
responsible for the performance at Wilton House. At the time, the 
Court was formally installed in his house (cf, Cal. State Papers, Dom. 
1603-10, pp. 47-59), and the Court officers commissioned the players 
to perform there, and paid all their expenses. The alleged tradition, 
recently promulgated for the first time by the owners of Wilton, that As 
You Like It was performed on the occasion, is unsupported by con- 
temporary evidence. 



MATURITY OF GENIUS 24 1 

on the list^ The dramatist Dekker was author of a 
somewhat bombastic account of the elaborate cere- 
monial, which accompanied a splendid series of 
copper-plate engravings of the triumphal arches 
spanning the streets. On April 9, 1604, the King 
gave further proof of his friendly interest in the for- 
tunes of his actors by causing an official letter to be 
sent to the Lord Mayor of London and the Justices 
of the Peace for Middlesex and Surrey, bidding them 
* permit and suffer ' the King's players to ' exercise 
their playes ' at their ' usual house,' the Globe.^ Four 
months later — in August — every member of the 
company was summoned by the King's order to attend 
at Somerset House during the fortnight's sojourn 
there of the Spanish ambassador extraordinary, 
Juan Fernandez de Velasco, duke de Frias, and 
Constable of Castile, who came to London to ratify 
the treaty of peace between England and Spain, 
and was magnificently entertained by the Enghsh 
Court.^ Between All Saints' Day [November i] 



1 The grant is transcribed in the New Shakspere Society's Trans- 
actions, 1877-9, Appendix ii, from the Lord Chamberlain's papers in 
the Public Record Office, where it is now numbered 660. The number 
allotted it in the Transactions is obsolete. 

2 A contemporary copy of this letter, which declared the Queen's 
players acting at the Fortune and the Prince's players at the Curtain 
to be entitled to the same privileges as the King's players, is at Dulwich 
College (cf. G. F. Warner's Catalogue of the Dulwich Manuscripts, 
pp. 26-7). Collier printed it in his New Facts with fraudulent addi- 
tions, in which the names of Shakespeare and other actors figured. 

2 Mr. Halliwell-Phillipps in his Outlines, i. 213, cites a royal order 
to this effect, but gives no authority, and I have sought in vain for the 
document at the Public Record Office, at the British Museum, and 
R 



242 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

and the ensuing Shrove Tuesday, which fell early 
in February 1605, Shakespeare's company gave no 
fewer than eleven performances at Whitehall in the 
royal presence.^ 

elsewhere. But there is no reason to doubt the fact that Shakespeare 
and his fellow-actors took, as Grooms of the Chamber, part in the 
ceremonies attending the Constable's visit to London. In the 
unprinted accounts of Edmund Tihiey, master of the revels, for the 
year October 1603 to October 1604, charge is made for his three 
days' attendance with four men to direct the entertainments 'at the 
receaving of the Constable of Spayne ' (Public Record Office, Declared 
Accounts, Pipe Office Roll 2805). The magnificent festivities culmi- 
nated in a splendid banquet given in the Constable's honour by James I 
at Whitehall on Sunday, August W — the day on which the treaty 
was signed. In the morning ail the members of the royal household 
accompanied the Constable in formal procession from Somerset House. 
After the banquet, at which the earls of Pembroke and Southampton 
acted as stewards, there was a ball, and the King's guests subsequently 
witnessed exhibitions of bear baiting, bull baiting, rope dancing, and 
feats of horsemanship. (Cf. Stow's Chronicle, li^^i, pp. 845-6, and 
a Spanish pamphlet, Relacioji de la Jornada del exc™-^ Condestabile 
de Castilla, &c., Antwerp, 1604, 4to, which was summarised in 
Ellis's Original Letters, 2nd series, vol. iii. pp. 207-215, and was partly 
translated in Mr. W. B. ^^^^s England as seen by Foreigners, pp. 117- 
124.) 

1 At the Bodleian Library (MS. Rawlinson, A 204) are the original 
accounts of Lord Stanhope of Harrington, Treasurer of the Chamber 
for various (detached) years in the early part of James I's reign. These 
documents show that Shakespeare's company acted at Court on 
November i and 4, December 26 and 28, 1604, and on January 7 
and 8, February 2 and 3, and the evenings of the following Shrove 
Sunday, Shrove Monday, and Shrove Tuesday, 1605. 



THE HIGHEST THEMES OF TRAGEDY. 243 



XIV 

THE HIGHEST THEMES OF TRAGEDY 

Under the incentive of such exalted patronage, 
Shakespeare's activity redoubled, but his work shows 
'Othello' none of the conventional marks of literature 
sure for^^" that is produced in the blaze of Court favour. 
Measure.' 'pj^g ^x^\, six ycars of the new reign saw him 
absorbed in the highest themes of tragedy, and an 
unparalleled intensity and energy, which bore few 
traces of the trammels of a Court, thenceforth illu- 
mined every scene that he contrived. To 1604 the 
composition of two plays can be confidently assigned, 
one of which — ' Othello ' — ranks with Shake- 
speare's greatest achievements; while the other — 
* Measure for Measure ' — although as a whole far infe- 
rior to 'Othello,' contains one of the finest scenes (be- 
tween Angelo and Isabella, 11. ii. 43 seq.) and one of 
the greaest speeches (Claudio on the fear of death, 
III. i. 116-30) in the range of Shakespearean drama. 
'Othello' was doubtless the first new piece by Shake- 
speare that was acted before James. It was produced 
at Whitehall on November i. 'Measure for Measure' 
followed on December 26} Neither was printed in 

1 These dates are drawn from a memorandum of plays performed at 
Court in 1604 and 1605 which is among Malone's manuscripts in the 
Bodleian Library, and was obviously derived by Malone from authentic 



244 • WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

Shakespeare's lifetime. The plots of both ultimately 
come from the same Italian collection of novels — 
Giraldi Cinthio's ' Hecatommithi,' which was first pub- 
lished in 1565. 

Cinthio's painful story of * Un Capitano Moro/ 
or ' The Moor of Venice ' (decad. iii. Nov. vii), is not 
known to have been translated into English before 
Shakespeare dramatised it in the play on which he 
bestowed the title of 'Othello.' He followed the 
main drift of the Italian romance with fidelity ; but 
he rechristened all the personages excepting Desde- 
mona ; he introduced the new character of Roderigo, 
and first gave definite significance to the character of 
Emilia. lago, who lacks in Cinthio's tale any feature 
to distinguish him from the conventional criminal of 
Italian fiction, became in Shakespeare's hands the 
subtlest of all studies of intellectual villainy and 
hypocrisy. But Shakespeare's genius declared itself 

documents that were in his day preserved at the Audit Office in Somer- 
set House. The document cannot now be traced at the Public Record 
Office, whither the Audit Office papers have been removed since 
Malone's death. Peter Cunningham professed to print the original 
document in his accounts of the revels at Court (Shakespeare Society, 
1842, pp. 203 et seq.), but there is no doubt that he embodied in 
his transcript unauthenticated additions to Malone's memorandum 
which were modern fabrications. Collier's assertion in his Neiv 
Particulars, p. 57, that Othello was first acted at Sir Thomas Egerton's 
residence at Harefield on August 6, 1602, was based solely on a docu- 
ment among the Earl of EUesmere's MSS. at Bridgwater House, which 
purported to be a contemporary account by the clerk. Sir Arthur Mayn- 
waring, of Sir Thomas Egerton's household expenses. This document, 
which Collier reprinted in his Egerton Papers (Camden Soc), p. 343, 
was authoritatively pronounced by experts in i860 to be ' a shameful 
forgery ' (cf. Ingleby's Complete View of the Shakspere Controversy 
1861, pp. 261-5). 



THE HIGHEST THEMES OF TRAGEDY 245 

most signally in his masterly reconstruction of the 
catastrophe. He invested Desdemona's tragic fate 
with a wholly new and fearful intensity by making 
lago's cruel treachery known to Othello at the last 
— just after lago's perfidy had impelled the noble- 
hearted Moor, in groundless jealousy, to murder his 
gentle and innocent wife. The whole tragedy dis- 
plays to magnificent advantage the dramatist's fully 
matured powers. An unfaltering equilibrium is main- 
tained in the treatment of plot and characters alike. 
Cinthio made the perilous story of * Measure for 
Measure' the subject not only of a romance, but of a 
tragedy called ' Epitia.' Before Shakespeare wrote his 
play, Cinthio's romance had been twice rendered into 
English by George Whetstone. Whetstone had not 
only given a somewhat altered version of the Italian 
romance in his unwieldy play of ' Promos and Cassan- 
dra' (in two parts of five acts each, 1578), but he 
had also freely translated it in his collection of prose 
tales, * Heptameron of Civil Discources ' (1582). Yet 
there is every likelihood that Shakespeare also knew 
Cinthio's play, which, unlike his romance, was untrans- 
lated ; the leading character, who is by Shakespeare 
christened Angelo, was known by another name to 
Cinthio in his story, but Cinthio in his play (and not 
in his novel) gives the character a sister named An- 
gela, which doubtless suggested Shakespeare's desig- 
nation. 1 In the hands of Shakespeare's predecessors 
the tale is a sordid record of lust and cruelty. But 
Shakespeare prudently showed scant respect for their 

^ Dr. Garnett's Italian Literature, 1898, p. 227. 



246 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

handling of the narrative. By diverting the course of 
the plot at a critical point he not merely proved his 
artistic ingenuity, but gave dramatic dignity and 
moral elevation to a degraded and repellent theme. 
In the old versions Isabella yields her virtue as 
the price of her brother's life. The central fact of 
Shakespeare's play is Isabella's inflexible and un- 
conditional chastity. Other of Shakespeare's altera- 
tions, like the Duke's abrupt proposal to m.arry Isa- 
bella, seem hastily conceived. But his creation of the 
pathetic character of Mariana * of the moated grange ' 
— the legally affianced bride of Angelo, Isabella's 
would-be seducer — skilfully excludes the possibility of 
a settlement (as in the old stories) between Isabella 
and Angelo on terms of marriage. Shakespeare's 
argument is throughout philosophically subtle. The 
poetic eloquence in which Isabella and the Duke pay 
homage to the virtue of chastity, and the many exposi- 
tions of the corruption with which unchecked sexual 
passion threatens society, alternate with coarsely comic 
interludes which suggest the vanity of seeking to ef- 
face natural instincts by the coercion of law. There is 
little in the play that seems designed to recommend it 
to the Court before which it was first performed. But 
the two emphatic references to a ruler's dislike of 
mobs, despite his love of his people, were perhaps 
penned in deferential allusion to James I, whose horror 
of crowds was notorious. In act i. sc. i. 67-72 the 
Duke remarks : 

I love the people, 
But do not like to stage me to their eyes. 
Though it do well, I do not relish well 



THE HIGHEST THEMES OF TRAGEDY 247 

Their loud applause and aves vehement. 
Nor do I think the man of safe discretion 
That does affect it. 

Of like tenor is the succeeding speech of Angelo 
(act II. sc. iv. 27-30) : 

The general [i.e. the public], subject to a well-wish'd king, . . . 
Crowd to his presence, where their untaught love 
Must needs appear offence. 

In 'Macbeth,' his 'great epic drama,' which he 
began in 1605 and completed next year, Shakespeare 
employed a setting wholly in harmony with 
the accession of a Scottish king. The story 
was drawn from HoHnshed's ' Chronicle of Scottish 
History,' with occasional reference, perhaps, to earlier 
Scottish sources.^ The supernatural machinery of 
the three witches accorded with the King's super- 
stitious faith in demonology ; the dramatist lavished 
his sympathy on Banquo, James's ancestor; while 
Macbeth's vision of kings who carry * twofold balls 
and treble sceptres ' (iv. i. 20) plainly adverted to the 
union of Scotland with England and Ireland under 
James's sway. The allusion by the porter (11. iii. 9) to 
the ' equivocator . . . who committed treason ' was 
perhaps suggested by the notorious defence of the 
doctrine of equivocation made by the Jesuit Henry 
Garnett, who was executed early in 1606 for his share 
in the ' Gunpowder Plot.' The piece was not printed 
until 1623. It is in its existing shape by far the 
shortest of all Shakespeare's tragedies ('Hamlet' is 
nearly twice as long), and it is possible that it survives 

^ Cf. Letter by Mrs. Stopes in AthenceuiUy July 25, 1896. 



248 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

only in an abbreviated acting version. Much scenic 
elaboration characterised the production. Dr. Simon 
Forman witnessed a performance of the tragedy at 
the Globe in April 1610, and noted that Macbeth 
and Banquo entered the stage on horseback, and 
that Banquo's ghost was materially represented (iii. 
iv. 40 seq.). Like ' Othello,' the play ranks with 
the noblest tragedies either of the modern or the 
ancient world. The characters of hero and heroine 
— Macbeth and his wife — are depicted with the 
utmost subtlety and insight. In three points ' Mac- 
beth ' differs somewhat from other of Shakespeare's 
productions in the great class of literature to which 
it belongs. The interweaving with the tragic story 
of supernatural interludes in which Fate is weirdly 
personified is not exactly matched in any other of 
Shakespeare's tragedies. In the second place, the 
action proceeds with a rapidity that is wholly without 
parallel in the rest of Shakespeare's plays. Nowhere, 
moreover, has Shakespeare introduced comic relief 
into a tragedy with bolder effect than in the porter's 
speech after the murder of Duncan (11. iii. i seq.). 
The theory that this passage was from another hand 
does not merit acceptance. 1 It cannot, however, be 
overlooked that the second scene of the first act — 
Duncan's interview with the 'bleeding sergeant' — 
falls so far below the style of the rest of the play as 
to suggest that it was an interpolation by a hack, of 
the theatre. The resemblances between Thomas Mid- 
dleton's later play of 'The Witch' (1610) and por- 

^ Cf. Macbeth, ed. Clark and Wright, Clarendon Press Series. 



THE HIGHEST THEMES OF TRAGEDY 249 

tions of * Macbeth ' may safely be ascribed to plagia- 
rism on Middleton's part. Of two songs which, ac- 
cording to the stage directions, were to be sung during 
the representation of * Macbeth ' (iii. v and iv. i), 
only the first line of each is noted there, but songs 
beginning with the same lines are set out in full in 
Middleton's play ; they were probably by Middleton, 
and were interpolated by actors in a stage version of 
' Macbeth ' after its original production. 

* King Lear,' in which Shakespeare's tragic 
genius moved without any faltering on Titanic 
'King heights, was written during 1606, and was 
^^^^•' produced before the Court at Whitehall on 

the night of December 26 of that year.^ Eleven 
months later, on November 26, 1607, two undis- ' 
tinguished stationers, John Busby and Nathaniel 
Butter, obtained a license for the publication of 
the great tragedy, and Nathaniel Butter published 
a quarto edition in the following year (1608). This 
was defaced by many gross typographical errors. 
Some of the sheets were never subjected to any 
correction of the press. The publisher, Butter, 
endeavoured to make some reparation for the 
carelessness of the edition by issuing a second 
quarto, which was designed to free the text of 
the most obvious incoherences of the first quarto. 
But the effort was not successful. Uncorrected 
sheets disfigured the second quarto little less con- 
spicuously than the first.^ In the First Folio 

1 This fact is stated on the title-page of the quartos. 

2 The first quarto is that in which Shakespeare's surname is spelt on 



250 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

the play was printed from a different text to that 
followed in the quartos, and the Folio first sup- 
plied a satisfactory version of the play. Like its 
immediate predecessor, ' Macbeth,' the tragedy of 
' King Lear ' was mainly founded on Holinshed's 
* Chronicle.' The leading theme had been drama- 
tised as early as 1593, but Shakespeare's attention 
was no doubt directed to it by the publication of a 
crude dramatic adaptation of Holinshed's version in 
1605 under the title of * The True Chronicle History 
of King Leir and his three Daughters — Gonorill, 
Ragan, and Cordelia.' Shakespeare did not adhere 
closely to his original. He invested the tale of Lear 
with a hopelessly tragic conclusion, and on it he grafted 
the equally distressing tale of Gloucester and his two 
sons, which he drew from Sidney's 'Arcadia.'^ Hints 
for the speeches of Edgar when feigning madness 
were drawn from Harsnet's * Declaration of Popish 
Impostures,' 1603. Inevery act of ' Lear ' the pity and 
terror of which tragedy is capable reach their climax. 
Only one who has something of the Shakespearean 
gift of language could adequately characterise the 
scenes of agony — ' the living martyrdom ' — to which 
the fiendish ingratitude of his daughters condemns 

the title-page ' Shak-speare,' and Butter gives his full address ' at 
the signe of the Pide Bull neere St. Austiiz's Gate.' The title-page of 
the second quarto gives the surname as ' Shake-speare,' and Butter's 
name appears without any address. 

1 Sidney tells the story in a chapter entitled ' The pitiful state and 
story of the Paphlagonian unkind king and his blind son; first related 
by the son, then by his blind father' (bk. ii. chap. lo, ed. 1590, 4to. 
pp. 132-3, ed. 1674, fol.). 



THE HIGHEST THEMES OF TRAGEDY 251 

the abdicated king — *a very foolish, fond old man, 
fourscore and upward.' The elemental passions burst 
forth in his utterances with all the vehemence of the 
volcanic tempest which beats about his defence- 
less head in the scene on the heath. The brutal 
blinding of Gloucester by Cornwall exceeds in horror 
any other situation that Shakespeare created, if we 
assume that he was not responsible for the like scenes 
of mutilation in 'Titus Andronicus.' At no point in 
* Lear ' is there any loosening of the tragic tension. 
The faithful half-witted lad who serves the king as 
his fool plays the jesting chorus on his master's 
fortunes in penetrating earnest and deepens the 
desolating pathos. 

Although Shakespeare's powers showed no sign 
of exhaustion, he reverted in the year following the 
colossal effort of 'Lear' (1607) to his earlier habit 
•Timonof of Collaboration, and with another's aid corn- 
Athens, posed two dramas — ' Timon of Athens ' and 
' Pericles.' An extant play on the subject of 'Timon 
of Athens ' was composed in 1600,^ but there is nothing 
to show that Shakespeare and his coadjutor were 
acquainted with it. They doubtless derived a part 
of their story from Painter's ' Palace of Pleasure,' 
and from a short digression in Plutarch's ' Life of 
Marc Antony,' where Antony is described as emu- 
lating the life and example of ' Timon Misanthropos 
the Athenian.' The dramatists may, too, have 
known a dialogue of Lucian entitled ' Timon,' which 

1 It was edited for the Shakespeare Society in 1842 by Dyce, who 
owned the manuscript. 



25-2 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

Boiardo had previously converted into a comedy 
under the name of 'II Timone.' Internal evidence 
makes it clear that Shakespeare's colleague was 
responsible for nearly the whole of acts in and v. 
But the character of Timon himself and all the 
scenes which he dominates are from Shakespeare's 
pen. Timon is cast in the mould of Lear. 

There seems some ground for the belief that 
Shakespeare's coadjutor in 'Timon' was George 
Wilkins, a writer of ill-developed dramatic power, 
who, in 'The Miseries of Enforced Marriage' (1607), 
first treated the story that afterwards served for 
the plot of ' The Yorkshire Tragedy.' At any rate, 
Wilkins may safely be credited with por- 

« Pericles.' 

tions of ' Pericles,' a romantic play which 
can be referred to the same year as ' Timon.' Shake- 
speare contributed only acts iii and v and parts of iv, 
which together form a self-contained whole, and do 
not combine satisfactorily with the remaining scenes. 
The presence of a third hand, of inferior merit to Wil- 
kins, has been suspected, and to this collaborator 
(perhaps William Rowley, a professional reviser of 
plays who could show capacity on occasion) are 
best assigned the three scenes of purposeless coarse- 
ness which take place in or before a brothel (iv. ii, 
v and vi). From so distributed a responsibility the 
piece naturally suffers. It lacks homogeneity, and 
the story is helped out by dumb shows and pro- 
logues. But a matured felicity of expression charac- 
terises Shakespeare's own contributions, narrating 
the romantic quest of Pericles for his daughter 



THE HIGHEST THEMES OF TRAGEDY 253 

Marina, who was born and abandoned in a shipwreck. 
At many points he here anticipated his latest dra- 
matic effects. The shipwreck is depicted (iv. i) 
as impressively as in the 'Tempest,' and Marina 
and her mother Thaisa enjoy many experiences in 
common with Perdita and Hermione in the ' Winter'^ 
Tale.' The prologues, which were not by Shake- 
speare, were spoken by an actor representing the 
mediaeval poet John Gower, who in the fourteenth 
century had versified Pericles's story in his ' Confessio 
Amantis' under the title of * Apollonius of Tyre.' It 
is also found in a prose translation (from the French), 
which was printed in Lawrence Twyne's * Patterne of 
Painfull Adventures' in 1576, and again in 1607. 
After the play was produced, George Wilkins, one of 
the alleged coadjutors, based on it a novel called 
'The Painful Adventures of Pericles, Prynce of 
Tyre, being the True History of the Play of Pericles 
as it was lately presented by the worthy and ancient 
Poet, John Gower' (1608). The publisher Edward 
Blount, who subsequently played a chief part in the 
production of the First Folio, obtained a license 
for the publication of 'Pericles' on May 20, 1608. 
' Pericles ' was, however, actually published for the 
first time in a very mangled form by Henry Gosson, 
of Paternoster Row, in 1609.^ A second impression, 

1 The bombastic form of title shows that Shakespeare had no hand 
in the publication. The title-page runs: 'The late, And much 
admired Play, called Pericles, Prince of Tyre. With the true Relation 
of the whole Historic, adventures, and fortunes of the said Prince : As 
also, The no lesse strange, and worthy accidents, in the Birth and Life, 
of his Daughter Marina. As it hath been diuers and sundry times acted 



.2 54 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

without revision, followed within a year, and it was 
reprinted in 1611, 1619, 1630, and 1635. It was 
not included in Shakespeare's collected works till 
1664. 

On the same day (May 20, 1608) that Edward 

Blount obtained his license for the issue of * Pericles ' 

he secured from the Stationers' Company a second 

license, by the authority of Sir George Buc, 

and cieo- the Hcenser of plays, for the publication of 

patra.' . . . ^ ,. 

a tar more impressive piece 01 literature — 
a 'booke called "Anthony and Cleopatra."' No 
copy of this date is known, and once again the 
company probably hindered the publication. The 
play was first printed in the folio of 1623. The source 
of the tragedy is the life of Antonius in North's 'Plu- 
tarch.' Shakespeare closely followed the historical 
narrative, and assimilated not merely its temper, but, 
in the first three acts, much of its phraseology. A few 
short scenes are original, but there is no detail in such 
a passage, for example, as Enobarbus's gorgeous de- 
scription of the pageant of Cleopatra's voyage up the 
Cydnus to meet Antony (11. ii. 194 seq.), which is not 
to be matched in Plutarch. In the fourth and fifth 
acts Shakespeare's method changes and he expands 
his material with magnificent freedom.^ The whole 
theme is in his hands instinct with a dramatic grandeur 

by his Maiesties seruants at the Globe on the Banck-side. By William 
Shakespeare. Imprinted at London for Henry Gosson, &c.,' 1609; see 
facsimile of first edition (Oxford, 1905, 4to). 

^Mr. George Wyndham in his introduction to his edition of North's 
Plutarch, i. pp. xciii-c, gives an excellent criticism of the relations of 
Shakespeare's play to Plutarch's life of Antonius. 



THE HIGHEST THEMES OF TRAGEDY 255 

which lifts into sublimity even Cleopatra's moral 
worthlessness and Antony's criminal infatuation. The 
terse and caustic comments which Antony's level- 
headed friend Enobarbus, in the role of chorus, passes 
on the action accentuate its significance. Into the 
smallest as into the greatest personages Shakespeare 
breathed all his vitalising fire. The ' happy valiancy ' 
of the style, too — to use Coleridge's admirable phrase 
— sets the tragedy very near the zenith of Shake- 
speare's achievement, and while differentiating it 
from * Macbeth,' ' Othello,' and ' Lear,' renders it a 
very formidable rival. 

* Coriolanus ' (first printed from a singularly bad 
text in 1623) similarly owes its origin to the biography 
'Corio- of the hero in North's 'Plutarch,' although 
lanus. Shakespeare may have first met the story in 

Painter's ' Palace of Pleasure ' (No. iv). He again 
adhered to the text of Plutarch with the utmost lit- 
eralness, and at times — even in the great crises of the 
action — repeated North's translation word for word.^ 



1 See the whole of Coriolanus's great speech on offering his services 
to Aufidius, the Volscian general, iv. v. 71-107: 

My name is Caius Marcius, who hath done 
To thee particularly and to all the Volsces, 
Great hurt and mischief; thereto witness may 
My surname, Coriolanus ... to do thee service. 

North's translation of Plutarch gives in almost the same terms Corio- 
lanus's speech on the occasion. It opens : * I am Caius Martius, who 
hath done to thyself particularly, and to all the Volsces generally, 
great hurt and mischief, which I cannot deny for my surname of 
Coriolanus that I bear.' Similarly Volumnia's stirring appeal to her son 
and her son's proffer of submission, in act v. sc. iii. 94-193, reproduce 
with equal literalness North's rendering of Plutarch. * If we held our 



256 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

But the humorous scenes are wholly of Shakespeare's 
invention, and the course of the narrative was at times 
slightly changed for purposes of dramatic effect. The 
metrical characteristics prove the play to have been 
written about the same period as * Antony and 
Cleopatra,' probably in 1609. In its austere temper 
it contrasts at all points with its predecessor. The 
courageous self-reliance of Coriolanus's mother, 
Volumnia, is severely contrasted with the submissive 
gentleness of Virgilia, Coriolanus's wife. The hero 
falls a victim to no sensual flaw, but to unchecked 
pride of caste, and there is a searching irony in the 
emphasis laid on the ignoble temper of the rabble, 
who procure his overthrow. By way of foil, the 
speeches of Menenius give dignified expression to 
the maturest political wisdom. The dramatic interest 
throughout is as single and as unflaggingly sustained 
as in ' Othello.' 

peace, my son,' Volumnia begins in North, ' the state of our raiment 
would easily betray to thee what life we have led at home since thy 
exile and abode abroad; but think now with thyself,' and so on. The 
first sentence of Shakespeare's speech runs : 

Should we be silent and not speak, our raiment 

And state of bodies would bewray what life 

We have led since thy exile. Think with thyself . . « 



THE LATEST PLAYS 257 



XV 

THE LATEST PLAYS 

In 'Cymbeline,' 'The Winter's Tale,' and 'The 
Tempest,' the three latest plays that came from his 
The latest Unaided pen, Shakespeare dealt with roman- 
piays. |.-^ themes which all end happily, but he in- 

stilled into them a pathos which sets them in a cate- 
gory of their own apart alike from comedy and 
tragedy. The placidity of tone conspicuous in these 
three plays (none of which was published in his life- 
time) has been often contrasted with the storm and 
stress of the great tragedies that preceded them. But 
the commonly accepted theory that traces in this 
change of tone a corresponding development in the 
author's own emotions ignores the objectivity of Shake- 
speare's dramatic work. All phases of feeling lay 
within the scope of his intuition, and the successive 
order in which he approached them bore no expli- 
cable relation to substantive incident in his private 
life or experience. In middle life, his temperament, 
like that of other men, acquired a larger measure of 
gravity and his thought took a profounder cast than 
characterised it in youth. The highest topics of 
tragedy were naturally more congenial to him, and 



258 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

were certain of a surer handling when he was nearing 
his fortieth birthday than at an earlier age. The 
serenity of meditative romance was more in harmony 
with the fifth decade of his years than with the 
second or third. But no more direct or definite 
connection can be discerned between the progres- 
sive stages of his work and the progressive stages 
of his life. To seek in his biography for a chain of 
events which should be calculated to stir in his own 
soul all or any of the tempestuous passions that ani- 
mate his greatest plays is to under-estimate and to 
misapprehend the resistless might of his creative 
genius. 

In * Cymbeline ' Shakespeare freely adapted a frag- 
ment of British history taken from Holinshed, inter- 
'Cymbe- weaving with it a story from Boccaccio's 
line. ( Decameron ' (day 2, novel ix). Ginevra, 

whose falsely suspected chastity is the theme of the 
Italian novel, corresponds to Shakespeare's Imogen. 
Her story is also told in the tract called * Westward 
for Smelts,' which had already been laid under con- 
tribution by Shakespeare in the ' Merry Wives. '^ The 
by-plot of the banishment of the lord, Belarius, 
who in revenge for his expatriation kidnapped the 
king's young sons and brought them up with him 
in the recesses of the mountains, is Shakespeare's 
invention. Although most of " the scenes are laid 
in Britain in the first century before the Chris- 
tian era, there is no pretence of historical vraisem- 
blance. With an almost ludicrous inappropriateness 

^ See p. 178 and note 3. 



THE LATEST PLAYS 259 

the British king's courtiers make merry with technical 
terms peculiar to Calvinistic theology, like ' grace ' 
and * election.' ^ The action, which, owing to the com- 
bination of three threads of narrative, is exceptionally 
varied and intricate, wholly belongs to the region 
of romance. On Imogen, who is the central figure 
of the play, Shakespeare lavished all the fascina- 
tion of his genius. She is the crown and flower 
of his conception of tender and artless womanhood. 
Her husband Posthumus, her rejected lover Cloten, 
her would-be seducer lachimo are contrasted with 
her and with each other with consummate ingenuity. 
The mountainous retreat in which Belarius and his 
fascinating boy-companions play their part has 
points of resemblance to the Forest of Arden in ' As 
You Like It ' ; but life throughout ' Cymbeline ' is 
grimly earnest, and the mountains nurture little of the 
contemplative quiet which characterises existence in 
the Forest of Arden. The play contains the splendid 
lyric ' Fear no more the heat of the sun ' (iv. ii. 
258 seq.). The 'pitiful mummery' of the vision of 
Posthumus (v. iv. 30 seq.) must have been sup- 
plied by another hand. Dr. Forman, the astrologer 
who kept notes of some of his experiences as a 
playgoer, saw ' Cymbeline ' acted either in 16 10 or 
1611. 

* The Winter's Tale ' was seen by Dr. Forman 
at the Globe on May 15, 161 1, and it appears to 

">• In I. i. 136-7 Imogen is described as 'past grace' in the theo- 
logical sense. In i. ii. 30-31 the Second Lord remarks : 'If it be a 
sin to make a true election, she is damned.' 



26o WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

have been acted at Court on November 5 following. 
It is based upon Greene's popular romance which 
•The Win- was Called ' Pandosto' in the first edition of 
ter'sTaie." j^gS, and in numerous later editions, but 
was ultimately in 1648 re-christened * Dorastus and 
Fawnia.' Shakespeare followed Greene, his early foe, 
in allotting a seashore to Bohemia — an error over 
which Ben Jonson and many later critics have made 
merry.^ A few lines were obviously drawn from that 
story of Boccaccio with which Shakespeare had dealt 
just before in 'Cymbeline.' ^ But Shakespeare created 
the high-spirited Paulina and the thievish pedlar Au- 
tolycus, whose seductive roguery has become prover- 
bial, and he invented the reconciliation of Leontes, the 
irrationally jealous husband, with Hermione, his wife, 
whose dignified resignation and forbearance lend the 
story its intense pathos. In the boy Mamilius, the poet 
depicted childhood in its most attractive guise, while 
the courtship of Florizel and Perdita is the perfection 
of gentle romance. The freshness of the pastoral 
incident surpasses that of all Shakespeare's presenta- 
tions of country life. 

1 See p. 255, no^e i. Camillo's reflections (i. ii. 358) on the ruin 
that attends those who 'struck anointed kings' have been regarded, 
not quite conclusively, as specially designed to gratify James I. 

2 Conversations with Drummond, p, 16. 

^ In The Winter'' s Tale (iv. iv. 760 et seq.) Autolycus threatens that 
the clown's son ' shall be flayed alive ; then 'nointed over with honey, 
set on the head of a wasp's nest,' &c. In Boccaccio's story the villain 
Ambrogiuolo (Shakespeare's lachimo), after 'being bounden to the 
stake and anointed with honey,' was ' to his exceeding torment not 
only slain but devoured of the flies and wasps and gadflies wherewith 
that country abounded' (cf. Decameron, transl. John Payne, i. 164). 
See also Apuleius's Golden Ass, bk. viii. c. 35. 



THE LATEST PLAYS 26 1 

*The Tempest' was probably the latest drama that 
Shakespeare completed. In the summer of 1609 a 
fleet bound for Virginia, under the command 
of Sir George Somers, was overtaken by a 
storm off the West Indies, and the admiral's ship, the 
* Sea-Venture,' was driven on the coast of the hitherto 
unknown Bermuda Isles. There they remained ten 
months, pleasurably impressed by the mild beauty of 
the climate, but sorely tried by the hogs which over- 
ran the island and by mysterious noises which led 
them to imagine that spirits and devils had made the 
island their home. Somers and his men were given 
up for lost, but they escaped from Bermuda in two 
boats of cedar to Virginia in May 16 10, and the 
news of their adventures and of their safety was 
carried to England by some of the seamen in Sep- 
tember 16 10. The sailors' arrival created vast public 
excitement in London. At least five accounts were 
soon published of the shipwreck and of the mysterious 
island, previously uninhabited by man, which had 
proved the salvation of the expedition. * A Discovery 
of the Bermudas, otherwise called the He of Divels,' 
written by Sylvester Jourdain or Jourdan, one of the 
survivors, appeared as early as October. A second 
pamphlet describing the disaster was issued by the 
Council of the Virginia Company in December, and 
a third by one of the leaders of the expedition, 
Sir Thomas Gates, Shakespeare, who mentions the 
'still vexed Bermoothes' (l i. 229), incorporated 
in * The Tempest ' many hints from Jourdain, Gates, 
and the other pamphleteers. The references to the 
gentle climate of the island on which Prospero is 



262 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

cast away, and to the spirits and devils that infested 
it, seem to render its identification with the newly- 
discovered Bermudas unquestionable. But Shake- 
speare incorporated the result of study of other 
books of travel. The name of the god Setebos 
whom Caliban worships is dr^wn from Eden's trans- 
lation of Magellan's * Voyage to the South Pole' 
(in the 'Historic of Travell,' 1577), where the giants 
of Patagonia are described as worshipping a * great 
devil they call Setebos.' No source for the complete 
plot has been discovered, but the German writer, 
Jacob Ayrer, who died in 1605, dramatised a some- 
what similar story in * Die schone Sidea,' where 
the adventures of Prospero, Ferdinand, Ariel, and 
Miranda are roughly anticipated.^ English actors 
were performing at Nuremberg, where Ayrer lived, 
in 1604 and 1606, and may have brought reports 
of the piece to Shakespeare. Or perhaps both 
English and German plays had a common origin in 
some novel that has not yet been traced.^ Gonzalo's 
description of an ideal commonwealth (11. i. 147 seq.) 
is derived from Florio's translation of Montaigne's 
essays (1603), while into Prospero's great speech 
renouncing his practice of magical art (v. i. 33-57) 
Shakespeare wrought reminiscences of Golding's trans- 
lation of Medea's invocation in Ovid's ' Metamorphoses' 
(vii. 197-206). Golding's rendering of Ovid had been 
one of Shakespeare's best-loved books in youth. 

1 Printed in Cohn's Shakespeare in Germany. 

2 A Spanish story of the compulsory flight overseas of a magician- 
king and his daughter appears in a collection called A^ockes de Invierno 
(Winter Nights), by Antonio de Eslava (Madrid, 1609), 



THE LATEST PLAYS 263 

A highly ingenious theory, first suggested by 
Tieck, represents * The Tempest ' (which, except- 
ing ' The Comedy of Errors,' is the shortest of 
Shakespeare's plays) as a masque written to celebrate 
the marriage of Princess Elizabeth (like Miranda, 
an island-princess) with the Elector Frederick. 
This marriage took place on February 14, 161 2-1 3, 
and ' The Tempest ' formed one of a series of nineteen 
plays which were performed at the nuptial festivities 
in May 161 3. But none of the other plays produced 
seem to have been new; they were all apparently 
chosen because they were established favourites at 
Court and on the public stage, and neither in subject- 
matter nor language bore obviously specific relation to 
the joyous occasion. But 161 3 is, in fact, on more 
substantial ground far too late a date to which to assign 
the composition of 'The Tempest.' According to in- 
formation which was accessible to Malone, the play 
had *a being and a name' in the autumn of 161 1, 
and was no doubt written^ some months before. ^ 

1 Varioru?n Shakespeare, 1821, xv. 423, In the early weeks of 161 1 
Shakespeare's company presented no fewer than fifteen plays at Court. 
Payment of 150/. was made to the actors for their services on February 
12, 1610-11. The council's warrant is extant in ih.e Bodleian Libra?')/ 
MS. Rawl. A 204 (f. 305). The plays performed were not specified by 
name, but some by Shakespeare were beyond doubt among them, and 
possibly 'The Tempest.' A forged page which was inserted in a detached 
account-book of the Master of the Court-Revels for the years 161 1 
and 1 61 2 at the Public Record Office, and was printed as genuine in 
Peter Cunningham's Extracts from the Revels^ Accounts, p. 210, 
supplies among other entries two to the effect that ' The Tempest ' 
was performed at Whitehall at Hallowmas {i.e. November i) 161 1 
and that *The Winter's Tale' followed four days later, on November 5. 
Though these entries are fictitious, the information they offer may be 
true. Malene doubtless based his positive statement respecting the 



264 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

The plot, which revolves about the forcible expulsion 
of a ruler from his dominions, and his daughter's 
wooing by the son of the usurper's chief ally, is, 
moreover, hardly one that a shrewd playwright would 
deliberately choose as the setting of an official epitha- 
lamium in honour of the daughter of a monarch so 
sensitive about his title to the crown as James I.i 

In the theatre and at Court the early representa- 
tions of ' The Tempest' evoked unmeasured applause. 
The success owed something to the beautiful lyrics 
which were dispersed through the play and had been 
set to music by Robert Johnson, a lutenist in high 
repute. Like its predecessor * The Winter's Tale,' 
* The Tempest ' long maintained its first popularity 
in the theatre, and the vogue of the two pieces drew 
a passing sneer from Ben Jonson. In the Induc- 
tion to his ' Bartholomew Fair,' first acted in 16 14, he 
wrote: * If there be never a servant-monster in the 
Fair, who can help it he [^i.e. the author] says ? nor a 
nest of Antics. He is loth to make nature afraid in 
his plays like those that beget Tales, Tempests, and 
such like Drolleries.' The * servant-monster ' was an 

date of the composition of * The Tempest ' in i6ii on memoranda made 
from papers then accessible at the Audit Office, but now, since the 
removal of those archives to the Public Record Office, mislaid. All 
the forgeries introduced into the Revels' accounts are well considered 
and show expert knowledge (see p. 243, nofe i). The forger of the 1612 
entries probably worked either on the published statement of Malone, or 
on fuller memoranda left by him among his voluminous manuscripts. 

1 Cf. Universal Review, April 1889, article by Dr. Richard Garnett. 

2 Harmonised scores of Johnson's airs for the songs ' Full Fathom 
Five ' and * Where the Bee sucks,' are preserved in Wilson's Cheerful 
Ayres or Ballads set for three voices, 1660. 



THE LATEST PLAYS 265 

obvious allusion to Caliban, and * the nest of Antics * 
was a glance at the satyrs who figure in the sheep- 
shearing feast in * The Winter's Tale.* 

Nowhere did Shakespeare give rein to his 
imagination with more imposing effect than in 'The 
Fanciful Tempest' As in ' Midsummer Night's 
tion?of 'The Dream/ magical or supernatural agencies 
Tempest.' ^^.q ^^iq mainsprings of the plot. But the 
tone is marked at all points by a solemnity and pro- 
fundity of thought and sentiment which are lacking 
in the early comedy. The serious atmosphere has 
led critics, without much reason, to detect in the 
scheme of 'The Tempest' something more than the 
irresponsible play of poetic fancy. Many of the 
characters have been represented as the outcome of 
speculation respecting the least soluble problems of 
human existence. Little reliance should be placed 
on such interpretations. The creation of Miranda is 
the apotheosis in literature of tender, ingenuous 
girlhood unsophisticated by social intercourse, but 
Shakespeare had already sketched the outlines of 
the portrait in Marina and Perdita, the youthful 
heroines respectively of ' Pericles ' and * The Winter's 
Tale,' and these two characters were directly deve- 
loped from romantic stories of girl-princesses, cast by 
misfortune on the mercies of nature, to which Shake- 
speare had recourse for the plots of the two plays. 
It is by accident, and not by design, that in Ariel 
appear to be discernible the capabilities of human 
intellect when detached from physical attributes. 
Ariel belongs to the same world as Puck, although 



266 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

he is delineated in the severer colours that were 
habitual to Shakespeare's fully developed art. Cali- 
ban — Ariel's antithesis — did not owe his existence 
to any conscious endeavour on Shakespeare's part to 
typify human nature before the evolution of moral 
sentiment.^ Caliban is an imaginary portrait, con- 
ceived with matchless vigour and vividness, of the 
aboriginal savage of the New World, descriptions of 
whom abounded in contemporary travellers' speech 
and writings, and universally excited the liveliest 
curiosity.^ In Prospero, the guiding providence of the 
romance, who resigns his magic power in the closing 
scene, traces have been sought of the lineaments of 
the dramatist himself, who in this play probably bade 
farewell to the enchanted work of his life. Prospero 
is in the story a scholar-prince of rare intellectual 
attainments, whose engrossing study of the mysteries 
of science has given him command of the forces of 
nature. His magnanimous renunciation of his magical 
faculty as soon as by its exercise he has restored his 
shattered fortunes is in perfect accord with the gen- 
eral conception of his just and philosophical temper. 
Any other justification of his final act is superfluous. 
While there is every indication that in 1611 Shake- 
speare abandoned dramatic composition, there seems 

^ Cf. Browning, Caliban upon Setebos ; Daniel Wilson, Caliban, or 
the Missing Link (1873); and Renan, Caliban (1878), a drama con- 
tinuing Shakespeare's play. 

2 When Shakespeare wrote Troilns and Cressida he had formed 
some conception of a character of the Caliban type. Thersites says of 
Ajax (ill. iii. 264), * He's grown a very land-fish, languageless, a 
monster.' 



THE LATEST PLAYS 26/ 

little doubt that he left with the manager of his com- 
pany unfinished drafts of more than one play which 
Unfinished Others were summoned at a later date to 
plays. complete. His place at the head of the 

active dramatists was at once filled by John Fletcher, 
and Fletcher, with some aid possibly from his 
friend Philip Massinger, undertook the working 
up of Shakespeare's unfinished sketches. On Sep- 
tember 9, 1653, the publisher Humphrey Moseley 
obtained a license for the publication of a play which 
he described as * History of Cardenio, by Fletcher 
and Shakespeare.' This was probably identical with 
_, , the lost play, ' Cardenno,' or * Cardenna,' 

The lost r J» ' J 

play of which was twice acted at Court by Shake- 

' Cardenio.' , . • tit i • 

speare s company in 161 3 — m May durmg 
the Princess Elizabeth's marriage festivities, and on 
June 8 before the Duke of Savoy's ambassador.^ 
Moseley, whose description may have been f raudulent,^ 
failed to publish the piece, and nothing is otherwise 
known of it with certainty ; but it was no doubt a 
dramatic version of the adventures of the lovelorn 
Cardenio which are related in the first part of ' Don 
Quixote ' (ch. xxiii-xxxvii). Cervantes's amorous 
story, which first appeared in English in Thomas 
Shelton's translation in 16 12, offers much incident 
in Fletcher's vein. When Lewis Theobald, the 

1 Treasurer's accounts in Rawl. MS. A 239, leaf 47 (in the 
Bodleian), printed in New Shakspere Society's Transactions, 1895-6, 
part ii. p. 419. 

2 The Merry Devill of Edmonton, a comedy which was first 
published in 1608, was also re-entered by Moseley for publication on 
September 9, 1653, as the work of Shakespeare (seep. 188 supra'). 



268 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

Shakespearean critic, brought out his ' Double Fals- 
hood, or the Distrest Lovers,' in 1727, he mysteriously 
represented that the play was based on an unfinished 
and unpublished draft of a play by Shakespeare. 
The story of Theobald's piece is the story of Car- 
denio, although the characters are renamed. There 
is nothing in the play as published by Theobald 
to suggest Shakespeare's hand,^ but Theobald doubt- 
less took advantage of a tradition that Shakespeare 
and Fletcher had combined to dramatise the Cer- 
vantic theme. ^ 

Two other pieces, * The Two Noble Kinsmen ' and 
* Henry VIII,' which are attributed to a similar partner- 
ship, survive.2 ' The Two Noble Kinsmen ' was first 
printed in 1634, and was written, accord- 
Noble ing to the title-page, * by the memorable 

Kinsmen.' . . ^ , . 7 _ _ ^ , _, 

worthies of their time, Mr. John Fletcher 
and Mr. William Shakespeare, gentlemen.' It was 
included in the folio of Beaumont and Fletcher of 
1679. On grounds alike of aesthetic criticism and 
metrical tests, a substantial portion of the play was 
assigned to Shakespeare by Charles Lamb, Coleridge, 
and Dyce. The last included it in his edition of Shake- 
speare. Coleridge detected Shakespeare's hand in 
act I, act II. sc. i, and act iii. sc. i and ii. In addition 

1 Dyce thought he detected traces of Shirley's workmanship, but it 
was possibly Theobald's unaided invention. 

2 The 1634 quarto of the play was carefully edited for the New 
Shakspere Society by Mr. Harold Littledale in 1876. See also 
Spalding, Shakespeare's Authorship of'' Two Noble Kuismen,^ ^'^^Zy 
reprinted by New Shakspere Society, 1876; article by Spalding in 
Edinburgh Review, 1847; Transactions, '^q'^ Shakspere Society, 1874. 



THE LATEST PLAYS 269 

to those scenes, act iv. sc. iii and act v (except sc. ii) 
were subsequently placed to his credit. Some recent 
critics assign much of the alleged Shakespearean work 
to Massinger, and they narrow Shakespeare's contri- 
bution to the first scene (with the opening song, * Roses 
their sharp spines being gone ') and act v. sc. i and 
iv.^ An exact partition is impossible, but frequent 
signs of Shakespeare's workmanship are unmistak- 
able. All the passages for which Shakespeare can 
on any showing be held responsible develop the 
main plot, which is drawn from Chaucer's * Knight's 
Tale' of Palamon and Arcite, and seems to have 
been twice dramatised previously. A lost play, 
' Palaemon and Arcyte,' by Richard Edwardes, was 
acted at Court in 1566, and a second piece, called 

* Palamon and Arsett ' (also lost), was purchased by 
Henslowe in 1594. The non-Shakespearean residue 
of 'The Two Noble Kinsmen' is disfigured by 
indecency and triviality, and is of no literary 
value. 

A like problem is presented by * Henry VIII.' 
The play was nearly associated with the final scene 
in the history of that theatre which was identified 
with the triumphs of Shakespeare's career. * Henry 
VIII ' was in course of performance at the Globe 
Theatre on June 29, 161 3, when the firing of some 

• Henry caunou incidental to the performance set 
^^^^" fire to the playhouse, which was burned 
down. The theatre was rebuilt next year, but the 

1 Cf. Mr. Robert Boyle in Transactions of the New Shakspere 
Society, 1882. 



270 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

new fabric never acquired the fame of the old. Sir 
Henry Wotton, describing the disaster on July 2, 
entitled the piece that was in process of representa- 
tion at the time as * All is True representing some 
principal pieces in the Reign of Henry VHI.' ^ The 
play of ' Henry VHI ' that is commonly allotted to 
Shakespeare is loosely constructed, and the last act ill 



'^ Reliquice Wottoniance, 1675, pp. 425-6. Wotton adds 'that the 
piece was set forth with many extraordinary circumstances of Pomp and 
Majesty, even to the matting of the Stage; the Knights of the Order, 
with their Georges and Garters, the Guards with their embroidered Coats, 
and the like : sufficient in truth within a while to make greatness very 
familiar, if not ridiculous. Now King Henry making a Masque at the 
Cardinal Wohey's House, and certain Canons being shot off at his entry, 
some of the paper or other stuff wherewith one of them was stopped, did 
light on the Thatch, where being thought at first but an idle smoak, and 
their eyes more attentive to the show, it kindled inwardly, and ran 
round like a train, consuming within less than an hour the whole House 
to the very grounds. This was the fatal period of that vertuous fabrique ; 
wherein yet nothing did perish, but wood and straw and a few forsaken 
cloaks; only one man had his breeches set on fire, that would perhaps 
have broyled him, if he had not by the benefit of a provident wit put it out 
with bottle [d J ale.' John Chamberlain writing to Sir Ralph Winwood on 
July 8, 1613, briefly mentions that the theatre was burnt to the ground 
in less than two hours owing to the accidental ignition of the thatch roof 
through the firing of cannon ' to be used in the play,' The audience 
escaped unhurt though they had ' but two narrow doors to get out ' (Win- 
wood's Memorials, iii. p. 469). A similar account was sent by the Rev. 
Thomas Lorkin to Sir Thomas Puckering, Bart., from London, June 
30, 1613. 'The fire broke out,' Lorkin wrote, 'no longer since than 
yesterday, while Burbage's company were acting at the Globe the play 
oi Henry VHP {Court and Ti7nes of James I, 1848, vol. i. p. 253). 
A contemporary sonnet on ' the pittifull burning of the Globe playhouse 
in London,' first printed by Haslewood ' from an old manuscript 
volume of poems' in the Gentle^Jian's Magazine for 1816, was again 
printed by Halliwell-Phillipps (i. pp. 310, 311) from an authentic manu- 
script in the library of Sir Matthew Wilson, Bart., of Eshton Hall, 
Yorkshire. 



THE LATEST PLAYS 27 1 

coheres with its predecessors. The whole resembles an 
' historical masque.' It was first printed in the folio of 
Shakespeare's works in 1623, but shows traces of more 
hands than one. The three chief characters — the king, 
Queen Katharine of Arragon, and Cardinal Wolsey 
— bear clear marks of Shakespeare's best workman- 
ship ; but only act i. sc. i, act 11. sc. iii and iv 
(Katharine's trial), act iii. sc. ii (except 11. 204-460), 
act V. sc. i, can on either aesthetic or metrical grounds 
be confidently assigned to him. These portions may, 
according to their metrical characteristics, be dated, 
like 'The Winter's Tale,' about 161 1. There are good 
grounds for assigning nearly all the remaining thirteen 
scenes to the pen of Fletcher, with occasional aid 
from Massinger. Wolsey's familiar farewell to Crom- 
well (ill. ii. 204-460) is the only passage the author- 
ship of which excites really grave embarrassment It 
recalls at every point the style of Fletcher, and no- 
where that of Shakespeare. But the Fletcherian 
style, as it is here displayed, is invested with a great- 
ness that is not matched elsewhere in Fletcher's work. 
That Fletcher should have exhibited such faculty once 
and once only is barely credible, and we are driven to 
the alternative conclusion that the noble valediction 
was by Shakespeare, who in it gave proof of his versa- 
tility by echoing in a glorified key the habitual strain of 
Fletcher, his colleague and virtual successor. James 
Spedding's theory that Fletcher hastily completed 
Shakespeare's unfinished draft for the special purpose 
of enabling the company to celebrate the marriage 
of Princess Elizabeth and the Elector Palatine, which 



2/2 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

took place on February 14, 1612-13, seems fanciful. 
During May 16 13, according to an extant list, nineteen 
plays were produced at Court in honour of the event, 
but * Henry VIII' is not among them.^ The con- 
jecture that Massinger and Fletcher alone collaborated 
in * Henry VIII ' (to the exclusion of Shakespeare 
altogether) does not deserve serious consideration.^ 

1 Bodl. MS. Rawl. A 239 ; cf. Sped ding in Gentleman's Maga- 
zine, 1850, reprinted in New Shakspere Society's Transactions, 1874. 

2 Cf. Mr. Robert Boyle in New Shakspere Society's Transactions^ 
1884. 



THE CLOSE OF LIFE 273 



XVI 

THE CLOSE OF LIFE 

The concluding years of Shakespeare's life (161 1- 
161 6) were mainly passed at Stratford. It is probable 
that in 161 1 he disposed of his shares in the Globe and 
Blackfriars theatres. He owned none at the date of 
his death. But until 16 14 he paid frequent visits to 
London, where friends in sympathy with his work 
were alone to be found. His plays continued to form 
the staple of Court performances. In May 16 13, 
durine: the Princess Elizabeth's marriaofe 

Plays at ° ^ 

Court in festivities, Heming, Shakespeare's former 
^ ^^' colleague, produced at Whitehall no fewer 

than seven of his plays, viz. ' Much Ado,' 'Tempest,' 
'Winter's Tale,' 'Sir John Falstaff ' {i.e. 'Merry 
Wives'), 'Othello,' 'Julius Caesar,' and 'Hotspur' 
(doubtless ' i Henry IV ').i Of his actor-friends, one 
Actor- of the chief, Augustine Phillips, had died in 
friends. 1605, leaving by will ' to my fellowe, WiUiam 
Shakespeare, a thirty-shillings piece of gold.' With 
Burbage, Heming, and Condell his relations remained 
close to the end. Burbage, according to a poetic 
elegy, made his reputation by creating the leading 
parts in Shakespeare's greatest tragedies. Hamlet, 

1 Halliwell-Phillipps, ii. 87. 



274 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

Othello, and Lear were roles in which he gained 
especial renown. But Burbage and Shakespeare 
were popularly credited with co-operation in less 
solemn enterprises. They were reputed to be 
companions in many sportive adventures. The sole 
anecdote of Shakespeare that is positively known 
to have been recorded in his lifetime relates that 
Burbage, when playing Richard III, agreed with 
a lady in the audience to visit her after the perform- 
ance ; Shakespeare, overhearing the conversation, 
anticipated the actor's visit, and met Burbage on his 
arrival with the quip that ' William the Conqueror 
was before Richard the Third.' ^ 

Such gossip possibly deserves little more accep- 
tance than the later story, in the same key, which 
credits Shakespeare with the paternity of Sir William 
D'Avenant. The latter was baptised at Oxford on 
March 3, 1605, as the son of John D'Avenant, the 
landlord of the Crown Inn, where Shakespeare lodged 
in his journeys to and from Stratford. The story 
of Shakespeare's parental relation to D'Avenant 
was long current in Oxford, and was at times com- 
placently accepted by the reputed son. Shakespeare 
is known to have been a welcome guest at John 
D'Avenant's house, and another son, Robert, boasted 
of the kindly notice which the poet took of him 
as a child. ^ It is safer to adopt the less compro- 
mising version which makes Shakespeare the god- 

1 Manningham, Diary, March 13, 1601, Camd. Soc. p. 39. 

2 Cf. Aubrey, Lives; Halliwell-Phillipps, ii. 43; and art. Sir 
William D'Avenant in the Dictionary of National Biography, 



THE CLOSE OF LIFE 2/5 

father of the boy William* instead of his father. But 
the antiquity and persistence of the scandal belie the 
assumption that Shakespeare was known to his con- 
temporaries as a man of scrupulous virtue. Ben 
Jonson and Drayton — the latter a Warwickshire man 
— seem to have been Shakespeare's closest literary 
friends in his latest years. 

At Stratford, in the words of Nicholas Rowe, ' the 

latter part of Shakespeare's life was spent, as all men 

of good sense will wish theirs may be, in ease, 

Final set- . .;!,.-.,, 

tiement at retirement, and theconversationoi his iriends. 
As a resident in the town, he took a full share 
of social and civic responsibilities. On October i6, 1608, 
he stood chief godfather to William, son of Henry 
Walker, a mercer and alderman. On September 11, 
161 1, when he had finally settled in New Place, his name 
appeared in the margin of a folio page of donors (in- 
cluding all the principal inhabitants of Stratford) to a 
fund that was raised ^towards the charge of pro- 
secuting the bill in Parliament for the better repair of 
the highways.' 

Meanwhile his own domestic affairs engaged some 
of his attention. Of his two surviving children — 
both daughters — the eldest, Susanna, had married, on 
June 5, 1607, John Hall (i 575-1635), a rising phy- 
sician of puritan leanings, and in the following Fe- 
bruary there was born the poet's only granddaughter, 
Elizabeth Hall. On September 9, 1608, the poet's 
Domestic mother was buried in the parish church, and 
affairs. ^^ February 4, 161 3, his third brother 
Richard. On July 15, 161 3, Mrs. Hall preferred, 



276 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

with her father's assistance, a charge of slander 
against one Lane in the ecclesiastical court at Wor- 
cester; the defendant, who had apparently charged 
the lady with illicit relations with one Ralph Smith, 
did not appear, and was excommunicated. 

In the same year (161 3), when on a short visit to 
London, Shakespeare invested a small sum of money 
Purchase in a ncw property. This was his last invest- 
itiBiack-^ ment in real estate. He then purchased a 
friars. housc, the ground-floor of which was a haber- 

dasher's shop, with a yard attached. It was situated 
within six hundred feet of the Blackfriars Theatre — 
on the west side of St. Andrew's Hill, formerly termed 
Puddle Hill or Puddle Dock Hill, in the near neigh- 
bourhood of what is now known as Ireland Yard. The 
former owner, Henry Walker, a musician, had bought 
the property for 100/. in 1604. Shakespeare in 161 3 
agreed to pay him 140/. The deeds of conveyance 
bear the date of March 10 in that year.i Next day, on 
March 11, Shakespeare executed another deed (now in 
the British Museum) which stipulated that 60/. of the 
purchase-money was to remain on mortgage until the 
following Michaelmas. The money was unpaid at 
Shakespeare's death. In both purchase-deed and 
mortgage-deed Shakespeare's signature was witnessed 
by (among others) Henry Lawrence, ' servant ' or 
clerk to Robert Andrewes, the scrivener who drew 

1 The indenture prepared for the purchaser is in the Halliwell- 
Phillipps collection, which was sold to Mr. Marsden J. Perry of Pro- 
vidence, Rhode Island, U.S.A., in January 1897. That held by the 
vendor is in the Guildhall Library. 







SHAKESPEARE'S AUTOGRAPH SIGNATURE APPENDED TO 
THE PURCHASE-DEED OF A HOUSE IN BLACKFRIARS 
ON MARCH lo, 1612-13. 

Reproduced from the original document now preserved in the Guildhall 

Library, London. 



THE CLOSE OF LIFE 2// 

the deeds, and Lawrence's seal, bearing his initials 
* H. L.,' was stamped in each case on the parchment- 
tag, across the head of which Shakespeare wrote 
his name. In all three documents — the two inden- 
tures and the mortgage-deed — Shakespeare is de- 
scribed as * of Stratford-on-Avon, in the Countie of 
Warwick, Gentleman.' He leased the property to 
John Robinson, a resident in the neighbourhood. But 
in 1615 he joined some neighbouring owners in a suit 
for the recovery of documents relating to his title. ^ 

With puritans and puritanism Shakespeare was 
not in sympathy,^ and he could hardly have viewed 
with unvarying composure the steady progress that 
puritanism was making among his fellow-townsmen. 
Nevertheless a preacher, doubtless of puritan pro- 
clivities, was entertained at Shakespeare's residence. 
New Place, after delivering a sermon in the spring of 
1 614. The incident might serve to illustrate Shake- 
speare's characteristic placability, but his son-in-law 
Hall, who avowed sympathy with puritanism, was 

1 For the newly recovered particulars of this suit, and also of a pay- 
ment made to Shakespeare and Burbage by the Earl of Rutland's steward 
on March 31, 1613, see preface to this edition. 

2 Shakespeare's references to puritans in the plays of his middle and 
late life are so uniformly discourteous that they must be judged to re- 
flect his personal feeling. (Cf. the following conversation concerning 
Malvolio in Twelfth Night (ii. iii. 153 et seq.)) : 

Maria. Marry, sir, sometimes he is a kind of puritan. 

Sir Andrew. O! if I thought that, I'd beat him like a dog. 

Sir Toby. What, for being a puritan ? thy exquisite reason, dear knight. 

Sir Andrew. I have no exquisite reason for 't, but I have reason good enough. 

In Winter'' s Tale (iv. iii. 46) the Clown, after making contemptuous 
references to the character of the shearers, remarks that there is 'but 
one puritan amongst them, and he sings psalms to hornpipes.' 



2/8 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

probably in the main responsible for the civility.^ In 
July John Combe, a rich inhabitant of Stratford, died 
and left 5/. to Shakespeare. The legend that Shake- 
speare ahenated him by composing some doggerel on 
his practice of lending money at ten or twelve per cent, 
seems apocryphal, although it is quoted by Aubrey and 
accepted by Rowe.^ Combe's death involved Shake- 
speare more conspicuously than before in civic affairs. 
Combe's heir William no sooner succeeded to his 
father's lands than he, with a neighbouring^ owner, 
Arthur Mannering, steward of Lord-chancellor Elles- 
mere (who was ex-officio lord of the manor), attempted 

1 The town council of Stratford-on-Avon, whose meeting-chamber 
almost overlooked Shakespeare's residence of New Place, gave curious 
proof of their puritanic suspicion of the drama on February 7, 1612, 
when they passed a resolution that plays were unlawful and* the suffer- 
ance of them against the orders heretofore made and against the 
example of other well-governed cities and boroughs,' and the council 
was therefore ' content,' the resolution ran, that ' the penalty of xs. 
imposed [on players heretofore] be x/i. henceforward.' Ten years later 
the King's players were bribed by the council to leave the city without 
playing. (See the present writer's Stratford-on-Avo7i, p. 270.) 

2 The lines as quoted by Aubrey {Lives, ed. Clark, ii. 226) run j 

Ten-in-the-hundred the Devil allows, 

But Combe will have twelve he sweares and he vowes ; 

If any man ask, who lies in this tomb ? 

Oh ! ho ! quoth the Devil, 'tis my John-a-Combe. 

Rowe's version opens somewhat differently : 

Ten-in-the-hundred lies here ingrav'd. 
'Tis a hundred to ten, his soul is not sav'd. 

The lines, in one form or another, seem to have been widely familiar in 
Shakespeare's lifetime, but were not ascribed to him. The first two in 
Rowe's version were printed in the epigrams by H[enry] P[arrot], 1608, 
and again in Q,z.m.^tVi^ Remahies, 1614. The whole first appeared in 
Richard Brathwaite's Remains'vix 1618 under the heading : * Upon one 
John Combe of Stratford upon Aven, a notable Usurer, fastened upon 
a Tombe that he had Caused to be built in his Life Time.' 




:K^ir, 



4 li <i;H^:ii0-ifiM^:: 




SHAKESPEARE'S AUTOGRAPH SIGNATURE APPENDED TO 
i A DEED MORTGAGING HIS HOUSE IN BLACKFRIARS 
QN MARCH II, 1612-13. 

Reproduced from the original document now preserved in the British 

Museum. 



THE CLOSE OF LIFE 279 

to enclose the common fields, which belonged to the 
corporation of Stratford, about his estate at Wel- 
Attem tto co^^^- The corporation resolved to offer the 
enclose the scheme a stout resistance. Shakespeare had 

Stratford r 1 i • 1 

common a twof old interest m the matter by virtue of 

fields 

his owning the freehold of 106 acres at Wel- 
combe and Old Stratford, and as joint owner — now 
with Thomas Greene, the town clerk — of the tithes of 
Old Stratford, Welcombe, and Bishopton. His inter- 
est in his freeholds could not have been prejudicially 
affected, but his interest in the tithes might be depre- 
ciated by the proposed enclosure. Shakespeare conse- 
quently joined with his fellow-owner Greene in obtain- 
ing from Combe's agent Replingham in October 1614 
a deed indemnifying both against any injury they 
might suffer from the enclosure. But having thus 
secured himself against all possible loss, Shakespeare 
threw his influence into Combe's scale. In November 
1 6 14 he was on a last visit to London, and Greene, 
whose official position as town clerk compelled him 
to support the corporation in defiance of his private 
interests, visited him there to discuss the position of 
affairs. On December 23, 1614, the corporation in 
formal meeting drew up a letter to Shakespeare im- 
ploring him to aid them. Greene himself sent to the 
dramatist ' a note of inconveniences [to the corpora- 
tion that] would happen by the enclosure.' But 
although an ambiguous entry of a later date (Septem- 
ber 161 5) in the few extant pages of Greene's 
ungrammatical diary has been unjustifiably tortured 
into an expression of disgust on Shakespeare's part 



28o ■ WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

at Combe's conduct,^ it is plain that, in the spirit of 
his agreement with Combe's agent, he continued to 
lend Combe his countenance. Happily Combe's 
efforts failed, and the common lands remain un- 
enclosed. 

At the beginning of 1616 Shakespeare's health 
was failing. He directed Francis Collins, a solicitor of 
Warwick, to draft his will, but, though it was prepared 
for signature on January 25, it was for the time laid 
aside. On February 10, 16 16, Shakespeare's younger 
daughter, Judith, married, at Stratford parish church, 
Thomas Quiney, four years her junior, a son of an old 
friend of the poet. The ceremony took place appa- 
rently without public asking of the banns and before 
a license was procured. The irregularity led to 
the summons of the bride and bridegroom to the 
ecclesiastical court at Worcester and the imposition 
of a fine. According to the testimony of John Ward, 
the vicar, Shakespeare entertained at New 

Death 

Place his two friends, Michael Drayton and 
Ben Jonson, in this same spring of 16 16, and 'had a 

1 The clumsy entry runs : * Sept. Mr. Shakespeare tellyng J. 
Greene that I was not able to beare the encloseing of Welcombe.' 
J. Greene is to be distinguished from Thomas Greene, the writer of the 
diary. The entry therefore implies that Shakespeare told J. Greene 
that the writer of the diary, Thomas Greene, was not able to bear the 
enclosure. Those who represent Shakespeare as a champion of popular 
rights have to read the ' I ' in 'I was not able ' as ' he.' Were that 
the correct reading, Shakespeare would be rightly credited with telling 
J. Greene that he disliked the enclosure; but palaeographers only 
recognise the reading 'L' Cf. Shakespeare and the Enclosure of 
Co77imon Fields at Welcombe, a facsimile of Greene's diary, now at 
the Birthplace, Stratford, with a transcript by Mr. E. J. L. Scott, edited 
by Dr. C. M. Ingleby, 1885. 



THE CLOSE OF LIFE 28 1 

merry meeting,' but ' itt seems drank too hard, for 
Shakespeare died of a feavour there contracted.' A 
popular local legend, which was not recorded till 
1762,^ credited Shakespeare with engaging at an 
earlier date in a prolonged and violent drinking bout 
at Bidford, a neighbouring village,^ but his achieve- 
ments as a hard drinker may be dismissed as 
unproven. The cause of his death is undetermined, 
* but probably his illness seemed likely to take a fatal 
turn in March, when he revised and signed the will 
that had been drafted in the previous January. On 
Tuesday, April 23, he died at the age of fifty-two.^ 
On Thursday, April 25 (O.S.), the poet was 
buried inside Stratford Church, near the 
northern wall of the chancel, in which, as part-owner 
of the tithes, and consequently one of the lay-rectors, 
he had a right of interment. Hard by was the charnel- 
house, where bones dug up from the churchyard were 
deposited. Over the poet's grave were inscribed the 
lines : 

Good friend, for Jesus' sake forbeare 
To dig the dust enclosed heare ; 
Bleste be the man that spares these stones, 
And curst be he that moves my bones. 

According to one William Hall, who described a 

^ British Magazine, June, 1 762. 

2 Cf. Malone, Shakespeaj'e, 1821, ii. 500-2; Ireland, Confessions, 
1805, p. 34; Green, Legend of the Crab Tree, 1857. 

3 The date is in the old style, and is equivalent to May 3 in the 
nevi' ; Cervantes, w^hose death is often described as simultaneous, died 
at Madrid ten days earher — on April 13, in the old style, or April 23, 
1 61 5, in the new. 



282 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

visit to Stratford in 1694,^ these verses were penned 
by Shakespeare to suit 'the capacity of clerks and 
sextons, for the most part a very ignorant set of 
people.' Had this curse not threatened them, Hall 
proceeds, the sexton would not have hesitated in 
course of time to remove Shakespeare's dust to * the 
bone-house.' As it was, the grave was made seven- 
teen feet deep, and was never opened, even to receive 
his wife, although she expressed a desire to be buried 
with her husband. 

Shakespeare's will, the first draft of which was 

drawn up before January 25, 1616, received many 

interlineations and erasures before it was 

The will. . ,., . T,fl-i T^ -^1 

signed m the ensmng March, r rancis Col- 
lins, the solicitor of Warwick, and Thomas Russell, 
* esquier,' of Stratford, were the overseers ; it was 
proved by John Hall, the poet's son-in-law and joint- 
executor with Mrs. Hall, in London on June 22 
following. The religious exordium is in conventional 
phraseology, and gives no clue to Shakespeare's 
personal religious opinions. What those opinions 
were, we have neither the means nor the warrant for 
discussing. But while it is possible to quote from the 
plays many contemptuous references to the puritans 
and their doctrines, we may dismiss as idle gossip 
Davies's irresponsible report that ' he dyed a papist.' 
The name of Shakespeare's wife was omitted from 
the original draft of the will, but by an interlineation 
in the final draft she received his second best bed 

^ Hall's letter was published as a quarto pamphlet at London in 
1884, from the original, now in the Bodleian Library, Oxford. 



THE CLOSE OF LIFE 283 

with its furniture. No other bequest was made her. 
Several wills of the period have been discovered in 
Bequest to which a bedstead or other article of house- 
his wife. \iqI(^ furniture formed part of a wife's inheri- 
tance, but none except Shakespeare's is forthcoming 
in which a bed forms the sole bequest. At the same 
time the precision with which Shakespeare's will ac- 
counts for and assigns to other legatees every known 
item of his property refutes the conjecture that he 
had set aside any portion of it under a previous 
settlement or jointure with a view to making indepen- 
dent provision for his wife. Her right to a widow's 
dower — z.e. to a third share for life in freehold estate 
— was not subject to testamentary disposition, but 
Shakespeare had taken steps to prevent her from 
benefiting — at any rate to the full extent — by 
that legal arrangement. He had barred her dower 
in the case of his latest purchase of freehold estate, 
viz. the house at Blackfriars.^ Such procedure 

1 The late Charles Elton, Q.C., was kind enough to give me a legal 
opinion on this point. He wrote to me on December 9, 1897: *I 
have looked to the authorities with my friend Mr. Herbert Mackay, 
and there is no doubt that Shakespeare barred the dower.' Mr. 
Mackay's opinion is couched in the following terms : ' The conveyance 
of the Blackfriars estate to William Shakespeare in 161 3 shows that 
the estate was conveyed to Shakespeare, Johnson, Jackson, and 
Hemming as joint tenants, and therefore the dower of Shakespeare's 
wife would be barred unless he were the survivor of the four bar- 
gainees.' That was a remote contingency, which did not arise, and 
Shakespeare always retained the power of making * another settlement 
when the trustees were shrinking.' Thus the bar was for practical pur- 
poses perpetual, and disposes of Mr. Halliwell-Phillipps's assertion that 
Shakespeare's wife was entitled to dower in one form or another from 
all his real estate. Cf. Davidson on Conveyancing ; Littleton, sect. 
45; Coke upon Littleton, ed. Hargrave, p. 379 <5, note i. 



284 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

is pretty conclusive proof that he had the inten- 
tion of excluding her from the enjoyment of his 
possessions after his death. But, however plausible 
the theory that his relations with her were from 
first to last wanting in sympathy, it is improbable 
that either the slender mention of her in the will or 
the barring of her dower was designed by Shake- 
speare to make public his indifference or dislike. 
Local tradition subsequently credited her with a wish 
to be buried in his grave; and her epitaph proves 
that she inspired her daughters with genuine affec- 
tion. Probably her ignorance of affairs and the 
infirmities of age (she was past sixty) combined to 
unfit her in the poet's eyes for the control of property, 
and, as an act of ordinary prudence, he committed 
her to the care of his elder daughter, who inherited, 
according to such information as is accessible, some 
of his own shrewdness, and had a capable adviser in 
her husband. 

This elder daughter, Susanna Hall, was, accord- 
ing to the will, to become mistress of New Place, 
and practically of all the poet's estate. She 

Plis heiress, 

received (with remainder to her issue in 
strict entail) New Place, all the land, barns, and 
gardens at and near Stratford (except the tenement 
in Chapel Lane), and the house in Blackfriars, London, 
while she and her husband were appointed executors 
and residuary legatees, with full rights over nearly all 
the poet's household furniture and personal belong- 
ings. To their only child and the testator's grand- 
daughter, or * niece,' Elizabeth Hall, was bequeathed 



THE CLOSE OF LIFE 285 

the poet's plate, with the exception of his broad silver 
and gilt bowl, which was reserved for his younger 
daughter, Judith. To his younger daughter he also left, 
with the tenement in Chapel Lane (in remainder to 
the elder daughter), 150/. in money, of which 100/., her 
marriage portion, was to be paid within a year, and 
another 1 50/. to be paid to her if alive three years after 
the date of the will.^ To the poet's sister, Joan Hart, 
whose husband, William Hart, predeceased the 
testator by only six days, he left, besides a con- 
tingent reversionary interest in Judith's pecuniary 
legacy, his wearing apparel, 20/. in money, a life 
interest in the Henley Street property, with 5/. for 
each of her three sons, William, Thomas, and Michael. 
To the poor of Stratford he gave 10/., and to Mr. 
Legacies Thomas Combe (apparently a brother of 
to friends. 'vVilUam, of the enclosure controversy) his 
swqrd. To each of his Stratford friends, Hamlett 
Sadler, WilHam Reynoldes, Anthony Nash, and John 
Nash, and to each of his * fellows ' {i.e. theatrical 
colleagues in London), John Heming, Richard Bur- 
bage, and Henry Condell, he left xxvjj. viij<^., with 
which to buy memorial rings. His godson, William 
Walker, received * xx ' shillings in gold. 

Before 1623 ^ an elaborate monument, by a London 
sculptor of Dutch birth, Gerard Johnson, was erected 

1 A hundred and fifty pounds is described as a substantial jointure 
in Merry Wives, ill. iii. 49. 

2 Leonard Digges, in commendatory verses before the First Folio of 
1623, wrote that Shakespeare's works would be alive 

[When] Time dissolves thy Stratford monument. 



286 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

to Shakespeare's memory in the chancel of the parish 
church.i It includes a half-length bust, depicting 
the dramatist on the point of writing. The 
^ °^ ' fingers of the right hand are disposed as 
if holding a pen, and under the left hand lies a 
quarto sheet of paper. The inscription, which was 
apparently by a London friend, runs : 

Judicio Pylium, genio Socratem, arte Maronem, 
Terra tegit, populus mseret, Olympus habet. 

Stay passenger, why goest thou by so fast? 
Read, if thou canst, whom envious death hath plast 
Within this monument; Shakspeare with whome 
Quick nature dide; whose name doth deck ys tombe 
Far more then cost ; sith all yt he hath writt 
Leaves living art but page to serve his witt. 

Obiit ano. doi 1616 ^tatis 53 Die 23 Ap. 

At the opening of Shakespeare's career Chettle 
wrote of his 'civil demeanour' and of the reports of 
Personal * his Uprightness of dealing which argues his 
character, honcsty.' In 1601 — whcu near the zcnith of 
his fame — he was apostrophised as * sweet Master 
Shakespeare ' in the play of ' The Return from 
Parnassus,' and that adjective was long after associ- 
ated with his name. In 1604 one Anthony Scoloker 
in a poem called * Daiphantus ' bestowed on him the 
epithet ' friendly.' After the close of his career 
Jonson wrote of him : * I loved the man and do 
honour his memory, on this side idolatry as much as 
any. He was, indeed, honest and of an open and free 

1 Cf. Dugdale, Diary, 1827, p. 99; see under article on Bernard 
Janssen in the Dictionary of National Biography. 



THE CLOSE OF LIFE 28/ 

nature.' ^ No other contemporary left on record any- 
definite impression of Shakespeare's personal cha- 
racter, and the * Sonnets,' which alone of his literary 
work can be held to throw any illumination on a 
personal trait, mainly reveal him in the light of one 
who was willing to conform to all the conventional 
methods in vogue for strengthening the bonds between 
a poet and a great patron. His literary practices 
and aims were those of contemporary men of letters, 
and the difference in the quality of his work and theirs 
was due not to conscious endeavour on his part to act 
otherwise than they, but to the magic and involuntary 
working of his genius. He seemed unconscious of 
his marvellous superiority to his professional com- 
rades. The references in his will to his fellow-actors, 
and the spirit in which (as they announce in the First 
Folio) they approached the task of collecting his works 
after his death, corroborate the description of him 
as a sympathetic friend of gentle, unassuming mien. 
The later traditions brought together by Aubrey 
depict him as 'very good company, and of a very 
ready and pleasant smooth wit,' and there is much in 
other early posthumous references to suggest a genial, 
if not a convivial, temperament, linked to a quiet turn 
for good-humoured satire. But Bohemian ideals and 
modes of lif^ had no genuine attraction for Shake- 
speare. His extant work attests his ' copious ' and 
continuous industry ,2 and with his literary power and 

^ 'Timber,' in Works, 1641. 

2 John Webster, the dramatist, made vague reference in the 
address before his 'White Divel ' in 161 2 to 'the right happy and 
copious industry of M. Shakespeare, M. Decker, and M. Heywood.' 



288 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

sociability there clearly went the shrewd capacity of a 
man of business. Pope had just warrant for the 
surmise that he 

For gain not glory winged his roving flight, 
And grew immortal in his own despite. 

His literary attainments and successes were chiefly 
valued as serving the prosaic end of providing per- 
manently for himself and his daughters. His highest 
ambition was to restore among his fellow-townsmen 
the family repute which his father's misfortunes had 
imperilled. Ideals so homely are reckoned rare among 
poets, but Chaucer and Sir Walter Scott, among 
writers of exalted genius, vie with Shakespeare in the 
sobriety of their personal aims and in the sanity of 
their mental attitude towards life's ordinary incidents. 



SURVIVORS AND DESCENDANTS 289 

XVII 

SURVIVORS AND DESCENDANTS 

Shakespeare's widow died on August 6, 1623, at 
the age of sixty-seven, and was buried near her 
The husband inside the chancel two days later, 

survivors. Some affectionately phrased Latin elegiacs 
— doubtless from Dr. Hall's pen — were inscribed on 
a brass plate fastened to the stone above her grave. ^ 
The younger daughter, Judith, resided with her hus- 
band, Thomas Quiney, at The Cage, a house at the 
Bridge Street corner of High Street, which he leased 
of the Corporation from 1616 till 1652. There he 
carried on the trade of a vintner, and took part 

Mistress . . 

Judith in municipal affairs, acting as a councillor 
^^"^^' from 1 61 7 and as chamberlain in 162 1-2 
and 1622-3 5 but after 1630 his affairs grew embar- 
rassed, and he left Stratford late in 1652 for London, 
where he seems to have died a few months later. Of 
his three sons by Judith, the eldest, Shakespeare 
(baptised on November 23, 1616), was buried in Strat- 
ford Churchyard on May 8, 161 7; the second son, 
Richard (baptised on February 9, 161 7-1 8), was 
buried on January 28, 1638-9; and the third son, 

1 The vi^ords run: ' Heere lyeth interred the bodye of Anne,vv^ife of 
Mr. William Shakespeare, who depted. this life the 6th day of August, 
1623, being of the age of 67 yeares. 

Vbera, tu, mater, tu lac vitamq. dedisti, 

Vae mihi ; pro tanto munere saxa dabo 
Quam mallem, amoueat lapidem bonus Angel [us] ore, 

Exeat ut Christi Corpus, imago tua. 
Sed nil vota valent ; venias cito, Christe ; resurget, 

Clausa licet tumulo, mater, et astra petet. 

U 



290 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

Thomas (baptised on January 23, 1619-20), was 
buried on February 26, 1638-9. Judith survived her 
husband, sons, and sister, dying at Stratford on 
February 9, 166 1-2, in her seventy-seventh year. 

The poet's elder daughter, Mrs. Susanna Hall, re- 
sided at New Place till her death. Her sister Judith 
alienated to her the Chapel Place tenement before 
1633, but that, with the interest in the 

Mistress -'<-" ^ 

Susanna Stratford tithes, she soon disposed of. Her 
husband. Dr. John Hall, died on Novem- 
ber 25, 1635. In* 1642 James Cooke, a surgeon in 
attendance on some Royalist troops stationed at 
Stratford, visited Mrs. Hall and examined manu- 
scripts in her possession, but they were apparently of 
her husband's, not of her father's, composition.^ From 
July 1 1 to 13, 1643, Queen Henrietta Maria, while jour- 
neying from Newark to Oxford, was billeted on Mrs. 
Hall at New Place for three days, and was visited 
there by Prince Rupert. Mrs. Hall was buried beside 
her husband in Stratford Churchyard on July 11, 
1649, ^^d a rhyming inscription, describing her as 
' witty above her sex,' was engraved on her tomb- 
stone. The whole inscription ran : ' Heere lyeth ye 
body of Svsanna, wife to John Hall, Gent, ye davghter 
of William Shakespeare, Gent. She deceased ye 
nth of Jvly, a.d. 1649, a-ged 66. 

' Witty above her sexe, but that's not all, 
Wise to Salvation w^as good Mistress Hall, 
Something of Shakespere vi^as in that, but this 
Wholy of him with M^hom she's now in blisse. 
Then, passenger, ha'st ne're a teare, 
To weepe with her that wept with all ? 

^ Cf. Hall, Select Observations^ ed. Cooke, 1657. 



SURVIVORS AND DESCENDANTS 29 1 

That wept, yet set herselfe to chere 

Them up with comforts cordiall. 
Her Love shall live, her mercy spread, 
"When thou hast ne're a teare to shed.' 

Mrs. Hall's only child, Elizabeth, was the last 
surviving descendant of the poet. In April 1626 she 
^, , married her first husband, Thomas Nash of 

The last 

descen- Stratford (b. 1593), who studied at Lincoln's 

dant. 11. 

Inn, was a man 01 property, and, dymg 
childless at New Place on April 4, 1647, was buried 
in Stratford Church next day. At Billesley, a village 
four miles from Stratford, on June 5, 1649, Mrs. Nash 
married, as a second husband, a widower, John Barnard 
of Abington Manor, near Northampton, who was 
knighted by Charles II in 1661. About the same 
date she seems to have abandoned New Place for her 
husband's residence at Abington. Dying without 
issue, she was buried there on February 17, 1669-70. 
Her husband survived her four years, and was buried 
beside her.^ On her mother's death in 1649 Lady 
Barnard inherited under the poet's will the land near 
Stratford, New Place, the house at Blackfriars, and (on 
the death of the poet's sister, Joan Hart, in 1646) the 
houses in Henley Street, while her father, Dr. Hall, left 
her in 1635 a house at Acton with a meadow. She 
sold the Blackfriars house, and apparently the Strat- 
ford land, before 1667. By her will, dated January 
1669-70, and proved in the following March, she left 
small bequests to the daughters of Thomas Hatha- 
way, of the family of her grandmother, the poet's 

1 Barnard's house and grounds at Abington have now been acquired 
by the Northampton Corporation and converted into a public museum 
and park. 



292 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

wife. The houses in Henley Street passed to her 
cousin, Thomas Hart, grandson of the poet's sister 
Joan. Thomas's direct descendants held them till 1806 
(the last male heir, John Hart, died in 1800). In ac- 
cord with Lady Barnard's will New Place was sold, 
being purchased on May 18, 1675, by Sir Edward 
Walker, Garter King-of-Arms. Walker's daughter 
Barbara, marrying Sir John Clopton, restored New 
Place to the Clopton family. Sir John renovated it 
in 1702. On the death of his son Hugh in 1752, 
it was bought by the Rev. Francis Gastrell {d. 1768), 
who demolished it in 1759. The vacant site, with the 
garden attached, was annexed to the garden of the 
adjoining house, at one time the property of Thomas 
Nash, first husband of Shakespeare's granddaughter. 
In 1864 this property was purchased by public sub- 
scription, and in 1891 was made over to the Birthplace 
Trustees. New Place garden was converted into a pub- 
lic garden and Nash's house into New Place Museum. 
Of Shakespeare's three brothers, only one, Gilbert, 
seems to have survived him. Edmund, the youngest 
^, , brother, ' a player,' was buried at St. 

Shake- \ r J ' 

speare's Saviour's Church, Southwark, * with a fore- 
noone knell of the great bell,' on December 
31, 1607 ; he was in his twenty-eighth year. Richard, 
John Shakespeare's third son, died at Stratford in 
February 161 3, aged 39. ' Gilbert Shakespeare ado- 
lescens ' \i.e. a youth], who was buried at Stratford on 
February 3, 1611-12, was doubtless son of the poet's 
brother, Gilbert ; the latter, then in his forty-sixth year, 
survived, according to Oldys, to a patriarchal age. 



AUTOGRAPHS, PORTRAITS, AND MEMORIALS 293 



XVIII 

AUTOGRAPHS, PORTRAITS, AND MEMORIALS 

The only extant specimens of Shakespeare's hand- 
writing that are of undisputed authenticity consist of 
the five autograph signatures which are re- 
specimens produced in this volume. As in the case of 
spSiS^' Edmund Spenser and of almost all the great 
^^P?" authors who were contemporary with Shake- 

wntmg. ^ •' 

speare, no fragment of Shakespeare's hand- 
writing outside his signatures — no letter nor any scrap 
of his literary work — is known to be in existence. 

These five signatures were appended by the poet 
to the following documents : 

The Purchase-deed (on parchment), dated March 10, 
161 2-1 3, of a house in Blackfriars, which the poet 
then acquired (since 1841 in the Guildhall Library, 
London). 
A Mortgage-deed (on parchment), dated March 11, 
161 3, relating to the house in Blackfriars, pur- 
chased by the poet the day before (since 1858 in 
the British Museum). 
The Poet's Will, finally executed in March 1616, 
within a month of his death. This document, 



294 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

which is now at Somerset House, London, con- 
sists of three sheets of paper, at the foot of each 
of which Shakespeare signed his name. 
In all the signatures Shakespeare used the old 
* English ' mode of writing, which resembles that still 
His mode in voguc in Germany. During the seven- 
of writing. |-gg]2th century the old 'EngHsh' character 
was finally displaced in England by the ' Italian ' 
character, which is now universal in England and in 
all English-speaking countries. In Shakespeare's 
day highly educated men, who were graduates of the 
Universities and had travelled abroad in youth, were 
capable of writing both the old ' English ' and the 
' Italian ' character with equal facility. As a rule 
they employed the 'English' character in their 
ordinary correspondence, but signed their names 
in the ' Italian ' hand. Shakespeare's use of the 
'English' script exclusively was doubtless a result 
of his provincial education. He learnt only the 
'English' char-acter at school at Stratford-on-Avon, 
and he never troubled to exchange it for the more 
fashionable ' Italian ' character in later life. 

Men did not always spell their surnames in the 

same way in the sixteenth and. seventeenth centuries. 

eiiin of '^^^ poet's surname has been proved capable 

the poefs of as many as four thousand variations.^ 

liame. , . , . . 

I he name of the poets father is entered 
sixty- six times in the Council books of Stratford- 
on-Avon, and is spelt in sixteen ways. There the 

^Wise, Autograph of William Shakespeare . . . together with 
4,000 ways of spelling the name, Philadelphia, 1869. 



AUTOGRAPHS, PORTRAITS, AND MEMORIALS 295 

commonest form is ' Shaxpeare.' The poet cannot 
be proved to have acknowledged any finality as to the 
spelling of his surname. It is certain that he wrote it 
indifferently Shakesp^r^or Shaksp^<2r^, while he and his 
friends at times adopted the third form — Shakespeare. 
In these circumstances it is impossible to acknowledge 
in any one form of spelling a supreme claim to 
correctness. The signature to the purchase-deed of 
March 10, 1612-13 is commonly read as 'William 
Shakspe/r,' though in all other portions of the deed 
the surname is spelt * Shak^spe<3;r^.' The signature to 
^^^^_ the mortgage-deed ' of the following day, 

graphs March 11, 1612-13, has been interpreted 
Biackfriars both as ' Shakspcr^ ' and * ShakspCf^r^.' In 
neither of these signatures are the letters 
following the first * e ' in the second syllable fully 
written out. They are indicated by a flourish 
above the *e.' Shakespeare apparently deemed it 
needful to confine his signature to the narrow strip 
of parchment that was inserted in the fabric of the 
deed to bear the seal, and he consequently lacked 
adequate space wherein to complete his autograph. 
The flourish above the * e ' has been held to represent 
the cursive mark of abbreviation for * re ' which was 
in use among mediaeval scribes. It is doubtful, how- 
ever, whether mediaeval methods of handwriting were 
familiar to Shakespeare or his contemporaries. In 
the second of the two signatures, the flourish has 
also been read as 'a.' But in both cases the flourish 
has possibly a less determinate significance than any 
which has hitherto been assigned to it. It may be in 



296 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

both autographs no more than a hasty dash of the 
pen — a rough and ready indication that the writer 
was hindered from completing the' word that he had 
begun by the narrowness of the strip of parchment 
to which he was seeking to restrict his handwriting. 
Whether, therefore, the surname in the two documents 
should be interpreted as 'Shaksper^' or 'Shakspe^a:;'^' 
cannot be stated positively. 

The ink of the first signature which Shakespeare 
appended to his will has now faded almost^ beyond 
recognition, but that it was * Shaksper^ ' 
graphs in may be inferred from the facsimile made by 
George Steevens in 1776. The second and 
third signatures to the will, which are easier to 
decipher, have been variously read as * Shaksper^,' 
' ShakspQare,' and * Shak^spe^r^ ' ; but a close 
examination suggests that, whatever the second 
signature may be, the third, which is preceded by 
the two words ' By me ' (also in the poet's hand- 
writing), is 'Shakspe^^r^.' * Shaksper^' is the spelling 
of the alleged autograph in the British Museum copy 
of Florio's ' Montaigne,' but the genuineness of that 
signature is disputable.^ 

But it is to be borne in mind that ' Shak^spe^^r^ ' 
'Shake- was the form of the poet's surname that was 
accepted"^ adopted in the text of all the legal docu- 
form. ments relating to the poet's property, and 

in the royal Ucense to him in the capacity of a 

1 See the article on John Florio in the Dictionary of National 
Biography ^ and Sir Frederick Madden's Observations on a7i Autograph 
of Shakspere, 1838. 



AUTOGRAPHS, PORTRAITS, AND MEMORIALS 297 

player in 1603. That form is to be seen in the 
inscription on his wife's tomb in the church of 
Stratford-on-Avon, although in the rudely cut in- 
scription on his own monument his name appears 
as ' Shak^p^<^r^.' * Shakespeare ' figures in the poet's 
printed signatures affixed by his authority to the 
dedicatory epistles in the original editions of his two 
narrative poems 'Venus and Adonis' (1593) and 
'Lucrece' (1594); it is prominent on the title-pages 
of almost all contemporary editions of his plays, and 
was employed in almost all the published references 
to him in the seventeenth century. Consequently, of 
the form ' Shakespeare ' alone can it be definitely said 
that it has the sanction of legal and literary usage.^ 

Aubrey reported that Shakespeare was *a hand- 
some well-shap't man,' but no portrait exists which can 
be said with absolute certainty to have been 
speare's exccutcd during his lifetime, although one 
porrai . ^^^ recently been discovered with a good 
claim to that distinction. Only two of the extant 
portraits are positively known to have been produced 
within a short period after his death. These are the 
bust in Stratford Church and the frontispiece to the 
folio of 1623. Each is an inartistic attempt at a 
posthumous likeness. There is considerable dis- 
crepancy between the two ; their main points of re- 
semblance are the baldness on the top of the head 
and the fulness of the hair about the ears. The bust 
was by Gerard Johnson or Janssen, who was a Dutch 

iCf. Halliwell-Phillipps, JVew Lamps or Old, 1880; Malone, 
Inquiry, 1796. 



298 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

stonemason or tomb-maker settled in Southwark^ It 
was set up in the church before 1623, and is a rudely 
TheStrat- carved specimen of mortuary sculpture, 
ford bust, xhere are marks about the forehead and 
ears which suggest that the face was fashioned from 
a death mask. The workmanship is clumsy. The 
round face and eyes present a heavy, unintellectual 
expression. The bust was originally coloured. The 
colours were restored and the monument repaired by 
John Hall, a local limner, in 1748. In i793"Malone 
caused the bust to be whitewashed. In 1861 the 
whitewash was removed, and the colours, as far as 
traceable, restored. The eyes are light hazel, the hair 
and beard auburn. There have been numberless repro- 
ductions. It was first engraved for Dugdale's 'Anti- 
quities of Warwickshire,' 1656, from a crude sketch 
which cannot be credited with authenticity. It was 
next engraved — very imperfectly — for Rowe's edition 
in 1709; then by Vertue for Pope's edition of 1725 ; 
and by Gravelot for Hanmer's edition in 1 744. A good 
engraving by William Ward appeared in 18 16, and a 
chromo-phototype was issued by the New Shakspere 

Society in 1880. The * Stratford ' portrait, an 
'Stratford' eightcenth-century painting (from the bust), 

presented in 1867 by W. O. Hunt, town clerk 
of Stratford, to the Birthplace, where it is prominently 
displayed, has neither historic nor artistic interest. 

The engraved portrait — nearly a half-length — 
which was printed on the title-page of the folio of 
1623, was by Martin Droeshout. On the opposite 
page lines by Ben Jonson congratulate ' the graver ' on 



AUTOGRAPHS, PORTRAITS, AND MEMORIALS 299 

having satisfactorily 'hit' the poet's ' face.' Jonson's 
testimony does no credit to his artistic discernment ; 

the expression of countenance, which is 
hout's very crudely rendered, is neither distinctive 

nor lifelike. The face is long and the 
forehead high ; the top of the head is bald, but the 
hair falls in abundance over the ears. There is a scanty 
moustache and a thin tuft under the lower lip. A stiff 
and wide collar, projecting horizontally, conceals the 
neck. The coat is closely buttoned and elaborately 
bordered, especially at the shoulders. The dimensions 
of the head and face are disproportionately large as 
compared with those of the body. In the unique proof 
copy which belonged to Halliwell-Phillipps (now with 
his collection in America) the tone is clearer than in 
the ordinary copies, and the shadows are less darkened 
by cross-hatching and coarse dotting. The engraver, 
Martin Droeshout, belonged to a Flemish family of 
painters and engravers long settled in London, where 
he was born in 1601. He was thus fifteen years old 
at the time of Shakespeare's death in 16 16, and it is 
consequently improbable that he had any personal 
knowledge of the dramatist. The engraving was 
doubtless produced by Droeshout very shortly before 
the publication of the First Folio in 1623, when he 
had completed his twenty-second year. It thus 
belongs to the outset of the engraver's professional 
career, in which he never achieved extended practice 
or reputation. A copy of the Droeshout engraving, 
by William Marshall, was prefixed to Shakespeare's 
* Poems ' in 1640, and William Faithorne made 



300 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

another copy for the frontispiece of the edition of 
* The Rape of Lucrece ' published in 1655. 

There is Httle doubt that young Droeshout in 
fashioning his engraving worked from a painting, and 
The there is a likehhood that the original picture 

hou°^^' from which the youthful engraver worked has 
painting, lately come to Hght. As recently as 1892 
Mr. Edgar Flower, of Stratford-on-Avon, discovered 
in the possession of Mr. H. C. Clements, a private 
gentleman with artistic tastes residing at Peckham 
Rye, a portrait alleged to represent Shakespeare. 
The picture, which was faded and somewhat worm- 
eaten, dated beyond all doubt from the early years of 
the seventeenth century. It was painted on a panel 
formed of two planks of old elm, and in the upper 
left-hand corner was the inscription * Will'" Shake- 
speare, 1609.' Mr. Clements purchased the portrait 
of an obscure dealer about 1840, and knew nothing of 
its history, beyond what he set down on a slip of 
paper when he acquired it. The note that he then 
wrote and pasted on the box in which he preserved 
the picture, ran as follows : * The original portrait of 
Shakespeare, from which the now famous Droeshout 
engraving was taken and inserted in the first collected 
edition of his works, published in 1623, being seven 
years after his death. The picture was painted nine 
[ver^ seven] years before his death, and consequently 
sixteen [ver^ fourteen] years before it was published. 
. . . The picture was publicly exhibited in London 
seventy years ago, and many thousands went to see it.' 
In all its details and in its comparative dimensions, 



AUTOGRAPHS, PORTRAITS, AND MEMORIALS 301 

especially in the disproportion between the size of 
the head and that of the body, this picture is 
identical with the Droeshout engraving. Though 
coarsely and stiffly drawn, the face is far more 
skilfully presented than in the engraving, and the 
expression of countenance betrays some artistic 
sentiment which is absent from the print. Connois- 
seurs, including Sir Edward Poynter, Mr. Sidney 
Colvin, and Mr. Lionel Cust, have almost unre- 
servedly pronounced the picture to be anterior in 
date to the engraving, and they have reached the 
conclusion that in all probability Martin Droeshout 
directly based his work upon the painting. Influences 
of an early seventeenth-century Flemish school are 
plainly discernible in the picture, and it is just possible 
that it is the production of an uncle of the young en- 
graver Martin Droeshout, who bore the same name as 
his nephew, and was naturalised in this country on 
January 25, 1608, when he was described as a 'painter 
of Brabant' Although the history of the portrait 
rests on critical conjecture and on no external con- 
temporary evidence, there seems good ground for re- 
garding it as a portrait of Shakespeare painted in his 
lifetime — in the forty-fifth year of his age. No other 
pictorial representation of the poet has equally serious 
claims to be treated as contemporary with himself, and 
it therefore presents features of unique interest. On 
the death of its owner, Mr. Clements, in 1895, the 
painting was purchased by Mrs. Charles Flower, 
and was presented to the Memorial Picture Gallery 
at Stratford, where it now hangs. No attempt at 



302 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

restoration has been made. A photogravure forms 
the frontispiece to the present volume.^ 

Of the same type as the Droeshout engraving, 
although less closely resembling it than the picture 
just described, is the ' Ely House ' portrait (now the 
property of the Birthplace Trustees at Stratford), 
which formerly belonged to Thomas Turton, Bishop 
of Ely, and it is inscribed ' je. 39 x. 1603.' ^ This 
painting is of high artistic value. The features are 
of a far more attractive and intellectual cast than in 
either the Droeshout pamting or engraving, and the 
many differences in detail raise doubts as to whether 
the person represented can have been intended for 
Shakespeare. Experts are of opinion that the picture 
was painted early in the seventeenth century. 

Early in Charles II's reign Lord Chancellor 
Clarendon added a portrait of Shakespeare to his 
great gallery in his house in St. James's. Mention 
is made of it in a letter from the diarist John Evelyn 
to his friend Samuel Pepys in 1689, but Clarendon's 
collection was dispersed at the end of the seventeenth 
century and the picture has not been traced.^ 

Of the numerous extant paintings which have 



1 Mr. Lionel Cust, director of the National Portrait Gallery, who has 
little doubt of the genuineness of the picture, gave an interesting account 
of it at a meeting of the Society of Antiquaries on December 12, 1895 
(cf. Society's Proceedings, second series, vol. xvi. p. 42). See also 
Illustrated Catalogue of the Pictures in the Memorial Gallery, 1896, pp. 
78-83. Mr. M. H. Spielmann disputes the authenticity in his essay on 
Shakespeare's Portraits in Stratford Town Shakespeare, 1 906, vol. x. 

2 Harper'' s Magazine, May 1897. 

^ Cf. Evelyn's Diary and Correspondence, iii. 444. 



AUTOGRAPHS, PORTRAITS, AND MEMORIALS 303 

been described as portraits of Shakespeare, only the 
' Droeshout ' portrait and the Ely House portrait. 
Later both of which are at Stratford, bear any 

portraits, definable resemblance to the folio engrav- 
ing or the bust in the church. 1 In spite of their 
admitted imperfections, those presentments can alone 
be held indisputably to have been honestly designed 
to depict the poet's features. They must be treated 
as the standards of authenticity in judging of the 
genuineness of other portraits claiming to be of an 
early date. 

Of other alleged portraits which are extant, the 

most famous and interesting is the * Chandos ' portrait, 

now in the National Portrait Gallery. Its 

•Chandos' pedigree suggests that it was intended to 

portrait. 

represent the poet, but numerous and con- 
spicuous divergences from the authenticated likenesses 

1 Numberless portraits have been falsely identified with Shake- 
speare, and it would be futile to attempt to make the record of the pre- 
tended portraits complete. Upwards of sixty have been offered for sale 
to the National Portrait Gallery since its foundation in 1856, and not 
one of these has proved to possess the remotest claim to authenticity. 
The following are some of the wholly unauthentic portraits that have at- 
tracted public attention : Three portraits assigned to Zucchero, who 
left England in 1580, and cannot have had any relations with Shake- 
speare — one in the Art Museum, Boston, U.S.A.; another, formerly 
the property of Richard Cosway, R.A., and afterwards of Mr. J. A. 
Langford of Birmingham (engraved in mezzotint by H. Green) ; and 
a third belonging to the Baroness Burdett-Coutts, who purchased it in 
1862. At Hampton Court is a wholly unauthentic portrait of the 
Chandos type, which was at one time at Penshurst; it bears the legend 
* ^tatis suae 34 ' (cf. Law's Cat. of Hampton Court, p. 234) . A 
portrait inscribed ' aetatis suae 47, 161 1,' belonging to Clement Kingston 
of Ashbourne, Derbyshire, was engraved in mezzotint by G. F. Storm 
in 1846. 



304 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

show that it was painted from fanciful descriptions 
of him some years after his death. The face is 
bearded, and rings adorn the ears. Oldys reported 
that it was from the brush of Burbage, Shakespeare's 
fellow-actor, who had some reputation as a limner,^ 
and that it had belonged to Joseph Taylor, an actor 
contemporary with Shakespeare. These rumours are 
not corroborated ; but there is no doubt that it was 
at one time the property of D'Avenant, and that it 
subsequently belonged successively to the actor 
Betterton and to Mrs. Barry the actress. In 1693 
Sir Godfrey Kneller made a copy as a gift for 
Dryden. After' Mrs. Barry's death in 171 3 it was 
purchased for forty guineas by Robert Keck, a 
barrister of the Inner Temple. At length it reached 
the hands of one John Nichols, whose daughter mar- 
ried James Brydges, third Duke of Chandos. In due 
time the Duke became the owner of the picture, and it 
subsequently passed, through Chandos's daughter, to 
her husband, the first Duke of Buckingham and 
Chandos, whose son, the second Duke of Buckingham 
and Chandos, sold it with the rest of his effects at Stowe 
in 1848, when it was purchased by the Earl of Elles- 
mere. The latter presented it to the nation. Edward 
Capell many years before presented a copy by Rane- 
lagh Barret to Trinity College, Cambridge, and other 
copies are attributed to Sir Joshua Reynolds and Ozias 
Humphrey (1783). It was engraved by George Vertue 

1 In the picture-gallery at Dulwich is * a woman's head on a boord 
done by Mr. Burbidge, ye actor ' — a well-authenticated example of 
the actor's art. 



AUTOGRAPHS, PORTRAITS, AND MEMORIALS 305 

in 1719 for Pope's edition (1725), and often later, one 
of the best engravings being by Vandergucht. A 
good lithograph from a tracing by Sir George Scharf 
was published by the trustees of the National Portrait 
Gallery in 1864. The late Baroness Burdett-Coutts 
purchased in 1875 a portrait of like type, which is 
said, somewhat doubtfully, to have belonged to John, 
Lord Lumley, who died in 1609, and to have formed 
part of a collection of portraits of the great men of his 
day at his house, Lumley Castle, Durham. Its early 
history is not positively authenticated, and it may 
well be an early copy of the Chandos portrait. The 
* Lumley ' painting was finely chromo-lithographed in 
1863 by Vincent Brooks. 

The so-called * Jansen ' or Janssens portrait, which 
belongs to Lady Guendolen Ramsden, daughter of 
^^ the Duke of Somerset, and is now at her 

The _ ' 

•Jansen' residence at Bulstrode, was first doubtfully 

portrait. . . 

identined about 1770, when m the posses- 
sion of Charles Jennens. Janssens did not come to 
England before Shakespeare's death. It is a fine 
portrait, but is unlike any other that has been asso- 
ciated with the dramatist. An admirable mezzotint 
by Richard Earlom was issued in 181 1. 

The * Felton ' portrait, a small head on a panel, 
with a high and very bald forehead (which the late 

Baroness Burdett-Coutts acquired in 1873), 
'Felton* was purchased by S. Felton of Drayton, 

Shropshire, in 1792, of J. Wilson, the owner 
of the Shakespeare Museum in Pall Mall; it bears a 
late inscription, ' Gul. Shakespear 1597, R. B.' \_z.e. 



306 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

Richard Burbage]. It was engraved by Josiah Boy- 
dell for George Steevens in 1797, and by James 
Neagle for Isaac Reed's edition in 1803. Fuseli 
declared it to be the work of a Dutch artist, but 
the painters Romney and Lawrence regarded it as 
of English workmanship of the sixteenth century. 
Steevens held that it was the original picture whence 
both Droeshout and Marshall made their engravings, 
but there are practically no points of resemblance 
between it and the prints. 

The 'Soest' or ' Zoust ' portrait — in the posses- 
sion of Sir John Lister-Kaye of the Grange, Wake- 
field — was in the collection of Thomas Wright, 

painter, of Covent Garden in 1725, when 
'Soest' John Simon engraved it. Soest was born 

twenty-one years after Shakespeare's death, 
and the portrait is only on fanciful grounds identified 
with the poet. A chalk drawing by John Michael 
Wright, obviously inspired by the Soest portrait, was 
the property of Sir Arthur Hodgson of Clopton 
House, and is now at the Memorial Gallery, Stratford. 
A well-executed miniature by Hilliard, succes- 
sively the property of William Somerville the poet, 

Sir James Bland Burges, and Lord North- 
Miniatures. .. 

cote, was engraved by Agar tor vol. n 01 the 

* Variorum Shakespeare' of 1821, and in Wivell's 
' Inquiry,' 1827. It has little claim to attention as a 
portrait of the dramatist. Another miniature (called 
the * Auriol ' portrait), of doubtful authenticity, for- 
merly belonged to Mr. Lumsden Propert, and a third 
is at Warwick Castle. 




WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 

From a plaster-cast of the terra-cotta bust now in the possession of the Gar- 
rick Club. 



AUTOGRAPHS, PORTRAITS, AND MEMORIALS 307 

A bust, said to be of Shakespeare, was discovered 
in 1845 bricked up in a wall in Spode & Copeland's 
^, china warehouse in Lincoln's Inn Fields. 

The 

Garrick The warehouse had been erected on the site 
of the Duke's Theatre, which was built by 
D'Avenant in 1660. The bust, which is of black 
terra cotta, and bears traces of Italian workmanship, 
is believed to have adorned the proscenium of the 
Duke's Theatre. It was acquired by the surgeon 
William Clift, from whom it passed to Clift's son-in- 
law, Richard (afterwards Sir Richard) Owen the natu- 
ralist. The latter sold it to the Duke of Devonshire, 
who presented it in 185 1 to the Garrick Club, after 
having two copies made in plaster. One of these 
copies is now in the Shakespeare Memorial Gallery 
at Stratford, and from it an engraving has been made 
for reproduction in this volume. 

The Kesselstadt death-mask was discovered by 
Dr. Ludwig Becker, librarian at the ducal palace at 
Darmstadt, in a rag-shop at Mayence in 
death- 1 849. The features resemble those of an 
alleged portrait of Shakespeare (dated 1637) 
which Dr. Becker purchased in 1847. This picture 
had long been in the possession of the family of Count 
Francis von Kesselstadt of Mayence, who died in 
1843. Dr. Becker brought the mask and the picture 
to England in 1849, ^^d Richard Owen supported 
the theory that the mask was taken from Shake- 
speare's face after death, and was the foundation of 
the bust in Stratford Church. The mask was for a 
long time in Dr. Becker's private apartments at the 



308 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

ducal palace, Darmstadt.^ The features are singularly 
attractive ; but the chain of evidence which would 
identify them with Shakespeare is incomplete.^ 

A monument, the expenses of which were defrayed 

by public subscription, was set up in the Poets' 

Corner in Westminster Abbey in 1741. Pope 

Memorials 

in sculp- and the Earl of Burlington were among 
the promoters. The design was by William 
Kent, and the statue of Shakespeare was executed by 
Peter Scheemakers.^ Another statue was executed 
by Roubiliac for Garrick, who bequeathed it to the 
British Museum in 1779. A third statue, freely 
adapted from the works of Scheemakers and Rou- 
biliac, was executed for Baron Albert Grant and was 
set up by him as a gift to the metropolis in Leicester 
Square, London, in 1879. A fourth statue (by Mr. 
J. A. Q. Ward) was placed in 1882 in the Central 
Park, New York. A fifth in bronze, by M. Paul Four- 

^ It is now the property of Frau Oberst Becker, the discoverer's 
daughter-in-law, Darmstadt, Heidelbergerstrasse iii. 

^ Some account of Shakespeare's portraits will be found in the follow- 
ing works : James Boaden, Inquiry into various Pictures aitd Prints 
of Shakespeare, 1824; Abraham Wivell, Inquiry into Shakespeare's 
Portraits, 1827, with engravings by B. and W. Holl; George Scharf, 
Principal Portraits of Shakespeare, 1864; J. Hain Friswell, f^ife- 
Portraits of Shakespeare, 1864 ; William Page, Sttidy of Shakespeare's 
Portraits, 1876; Ingleby, Man and Book, 1877, pp. 84 seq.; J. Parker 
Norris, Portraits of Shakespeare, Philadelphia, 1885, '^^'ith numerous 
plates; Mr. Spielmann's essay in Stratford Town Shakespeare, 
1906-7, vol. X. In 1885 Mr. Walter Rogers Furness issued, at Phila- 
delphia, a volume of composite portraits, combining the Droeshout 
engraving and the Stratford bust with the Chandos, Jansen, Felton, 
and Stratford portraits. 

^ Cf. Gentleman's Magazine, 1741, p. 105. 



AUTOGRAPHS, PORTRAITS, AND MEMORIALS 309 

nier, which was erected in Paris in 1888 at the expense 
of an EngUsh resident, Mr. W. Knighton, stands at the 
point where the Avenue de Messine meets the Boule- 
vard Haussmann. A sixth memorial in sculpture, by 
Lord Ronald Gower, the most elaborate and ambitious 
of all, stands in the garden of the Shakespeare Memo- 
rial buildings at Stratford-on-Avon, and was unveiled 
in 1888; Shakespeare is seated on a high pedestal; 
below, at each side of the pedestal, stand figures of 
four of Shakespeare's principal characters: Lady 
Macbeth, Hamlet, Prince Hal, and Sir John Falstaff. 
In the public park at Weimar a statue was unveiled 
on April 23, 1904. 

At Stratford, 'the Birthplace, acquired by the public 
in 1847, is, with Anne Hathaway 's cottage (which 
was acquired by the Birthplace Trustees in 1892), a 
place of pilgrimage for visitors from all parts of the 
globe. The 44,2 1 3 persons who visited the Birthplace 
in 1907 represented over forty nationalities. The site 
of the demoHshed New Place, with Nash's adjacent 
house and the gardens, is now also the property of the 
Birthplace Trustees, and is dedicated to public uses. 
Of a new memorial building on the river-bank at 
Stratford, consisting of a theatre, picture-gallery, and 
library, the foundation-stone was laid on April 23, 
1877. The theatre was opened exactly two years 
later, when ' Much Ado about Nothing ' was per- 
formed, with Helen Faucit (Lady Martin) as Beatrice 
and Barry Sullivan as Benedick. Performances of 
Shakespeare's plays have since been given annually 
'during April. The library and picture-gallery were 



510 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

opened in 1 881.1 j^ memorial Shakespeare library 
was opened at Birmingham on April 23, 1868, to 
commemorate the tercentenary of 1864, and, although 
destroyed by fire in 1879, was restored in 1882 ; it 
now possesses nearly ten thousand volumes relating 
to Shakespeare. 

1 A History of the Shakespeare Memorial, Stratford-on-Avon, 1882; 
Illustrated Catalogue of Pictures in the Shakespeare Memorial, 1896. 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 3 1 1 



XIX 

BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Only two of Shakespeare's works — his narrative 
poems * Venus and Adonis ' and * Lucrece ' — were 
pubUshed with his sanction and co-operation. These 
poems were the first specimens of his work to appear 
in print, and they passed in his Hfetime through a 
greater number of editions than any of his plays. 
At his death in 16 16 there had been printed seven 
editions of 'Venus and Adonis' (1593, and 1594 in 
Issues of quarto, 1596, 1599, 1600, and two in 1602, 
•Jj^ifg^p^^t-g all in small octavo), and five editions of 
lifetime. * Lucrccc ' (i594 in quarto, 1598, 1600, 
1607, 3.nd 16 16, in small octavo). The only lifetime 
edition of the 'Sonnets' was Thorpe's venture of 
1609.^ But three editions were issued of the piratical 
' Passionate Pilgrim,' which was fraudulently assigned 
to Shakespeare by the publisher William Jaggard, 
although it contained only a few occasional poems 
by him (1599, 1600 no copy known, and 161 2). 

Of posthumous separate editions of the two 
narrative poems in the seventeenth century, there 

1 This was facsimiled in 1862, in 1880, and by the Oxford Univer- 
sity Press in 1905 (with Venus and Adonis, Lucrece, The Passionate 
Pilgrim, and Pericles'). 



312 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

were two of 'Lucrece' — viz. in 1624 (* the sixth 
Posthu- edition') and in 1655 (with John Quarles's 
qlmrtos of ' Banishment of Tarquin') — and there were 
the poems, g^g many as seven editions of * Venus ' (161 7, 
1620, 1627, two in 1630, 1636, and 1675), making 
fourteen editions in eighty-two years. The two poems 
were next reprinted in ' Poems on Affairs of State ' 
in 1707 and in collected editions of Shakespeare's 
* Poems ' in 1709, 17 10, and 1725. Malone in 1790 
first admitted them to a critical edition of Shake- 
speare's works, and his example has since been gene- 
rally followed. 

A so-called first collected edition of Shakespeare's 
' Poems ' in 1640 (London, by T. Cotes for I. Benson) 
^^ was mainly a reissue of the ' Sonnets,' but it 

1 he -'^ 

'Poems' omitted eight (xviii, xix, xliii, Ivi, Ixxv, 

of 1640. 

Ixxvi, xcvi, and cxxvi) and it included the 
twenty poems of ' The Passionate Pilgrim,' with 
pieces by other authors. Marshall's copy of the 
Droeshout engraving of 1623 formed the frontispiece. 
There were prefatory poems by Leonard Digges and 
John Warren, as well as an address * to the reader ' 
signed with the initials of the publisher. There 
Shakespeare's * Sonnets ' were described as * serene, 
clear, and elegantly plain ; such gentle strains as shall 
re-create and not perplex your brain. No intricate 
or cloudy stuff to puzzle intellect. Such as will raise 
your admiration to his praise.' A chief point of 
interest in the volume of 'Poems' of 1640 is the fact 
that the ' Sonnets ' were printed then in a different 
order from that which was followed in the volume of 



, BIBLIOGRAPHY 313 

1609. Thus the poem numbered Ixvii in the original 
edition opens the reissue, and what has been regarded 
as the crucial poem, beginning • 

Two loves I have of comfort and despair, 

which was in 1609 numbered cxliv, takes the thirty- 
second place in 1640. In most cases a more or less 
fanciful general title is placed in the second edition at 
the head of each sonnet, but in a few instances a 
single title serves for short sequences of two or three 
sonnets which are printed as independent poems 
continuously without spacing. The poems drawn 
from * The Passionate Pilgrim ' are intermingled with 
the * Sonnets,' together with extracts from Thomas 
Heywood's ' General History of Women,' although no 
hint is given that they are not Shakespeare's work. 
The edition concludes with three epitaphs on Shake- 
speare and a short section entitled ' an addition of 
some excellent poems to those precedent by other 
Gentlemen.' The volume is of great rarity. An 
exact reprint was published in 1885. 

Of Shakespeare's plays there were in print in 
16 16 only sixteen (all in quarto), or eighteen if we 
o artos of ^^clude the * Contention,' the first draft of 
the plays <2 Henry VI' (1594 and 1600), and 'The 
poet's True Tragedy,' the first draft of *3 Henry 

leime. VI ' (i 595 and 1600). These sixteen quartos 
were publishers' ventures, and were undertaken with- 
out the co-operation of the author. 

Two of the plays, published thus, reached five 
editions before 1616, viz. 'Richard III ' (1597, 1598, 



314 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

1602, 1605, 1612) and 'I Henry IV' (1598, 1599, 

1604, 1608, 161 3). 

Three reached four editions, viz. * Richard II ' 
(1597, 1598, 1608 supplying the deposition scene for 
the first time, 161 5); 'Hamlet' (1603 imperfect, 1604, 

1605, 161 1 ) ; and ' Romeo and Juliet ' (i 59/ imperfect, 

1599, two in 1609). 

Three reached three editions, viz. ' Titus ' (1594, 

1600, and 161 1); ' Henry V ' (1600 imperfect, 1602, 
and 1608); and ' Pericles' (two in 1609, 161 1). 

Four reached two editions, viz. ' Midsummer 
Night's Dream' (both in 1600); 'Merchant of 
Venice ' (both in 1600) ; * Lear ' (both in 1608) ; and 
' Troilus and Cressida' (both in 1609). 

Four achieved only one edition, viz. * Love's 
Labour's Lost' (1598), '2 Henry IV' (1600), 'Much 
Ado ' (1600), ' Merry Wives ' (1602 imperfect). 

Three years after Shakespeare's death — in 1619 — 
there appeared a second edition of ' Merry Wives ' 
Posthu- (again imperfect) and a fourth of ,' Pericles.' 
qlTJrtos of ' Othello ' was first printed posthumously in 
the plays. 1622 (4to), and in the same year sixth edi- 
tions of ' Richard III ' and ' i Henry IV ' appeared.^ 
The largest collections of the original quartos — 
each of which survives in only four, five, or six copies 
— are in the libraries of the Duke of Devonshire, the 

1 Lithographed facsimiles of most of these volumes, with some of 
the quarto editions of the poems (forty-eight volumes in all), were 
prepared by Mr. E. W. Ashbee, and issued to subscribers by Halliwell- 
Phillipps between 1862 and 187 1. A cheaper set of quarto facsimiles, 
undertaken by Mr. W. Griggs, under the supervision of Dr. F. J. Furni- 
vall, appeared in forty-three volumes between 1880 and 1889. 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 3 1 5 

British Museum, and Trinity College, Cambridge, and 
in the Bodleian Library.^ All the quartos were issued 
in Shakespeare's day at sixpence each. 

In 1623 the first attempt was made to give the 
world a complete edition of Shakespeare's plays. 
The First Two of the dramatist's intimate friends and 
^"^^°- fellow-actors, John Heming and Henry 

Condell, were nominally responsible for the venture, 
but a small syndicate of printers and publishers under- 
took all pecuniary responsibility. Chief of the syn- 
dicate was William Jaggard, printer since 161 1 to the 
City of London, who began business as a bookseller 
only in 1594 in Fleet Street, east of the churchyard 
of St. Dunstan in the West. As the piratical pub- 
lisher of ' The Passionate Pilgrim ' he had long known 
the commercial value of Shakespeare's work. In 1605 
he first acquired a press of his own, purchasing a chief 
share in that of James Roberts, who had printed the 
_, , quarto editions of the ' Merchant of Venice ' 

The pub- ^ 

lishing and ' Midsummer Night's Dream ' in 1600 

syndicate. , , , r / tt 1 » • 

and the complete quarto of Hamlet m 
1604. Roberts enjoyed for nearly twenty-one years 
the right to print ' the players' bills,' or programmes, 
and he made over that privilege to Jaggard with his 

1 Perfect copies range in price, according to their rarity, from 
300/. to 2,000/. In 1864, at the sale of George Daniel's library, 
quarto copies of Love's Labour's Lost' and of ' Merry Wives' (first 
edition) each fetched 346/. los. On April 23, 1904, the 1600 quarto 
of *2 Henry IV' fetched at Sotheby's 1,035/., while the 1594 quarto 
of 'Titus' (unique copy found at Lund, Sweden) was bought by an 
American collector in January 1905 for 2,000/. On June i, 1907, 
a quarto of The First Part of the Contention ' (1594) — the early draft 
of ' 2 Henry VI ' — fetched 1,910/. 



3l6 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

Other literary property in 1615. It is to the close 
personal relations with the playhouse managers 
into which the acquisition of the right of printing 
' the players' bill ' brought Jaggard that the incep- 
tion of the scheme of the * First Folio ' may safely 
be attributed. Jaggard associated his son Isaac 
with the enterprise. They alone of the members 
of the syndicate were printers. Their three partners 
were publishers or booksellers only. Two of these, 
William Aspley and John Smethwick, had already 
speculated in plays of Shakespeare. Aspley had 
published with another in 1600 the * Second Part of 
Henry IV ' and ' Much Ado about Nothing,' and in 
1609 half of Thorpe's impression of Shakespeare's 
* Sonnets.' Smethwick, whose shop was in St. Dun- 
stan's Churchyard, Fleet Street, near Jaggard's first 
premises, had published in 16 11 two late editions of 
' Romeo and Juliet ' and one of ' Hamlet.' Edward 
Blount, the fifth partner, was an interesting figure in 
the trade, and, unlike his companions, had a true taste 
in literature. He had been a friend and admirer of 
Christopher Marlowe, and had actively engaged in 
the posthumous publication of two of Marlowe's 
poems. He had published that curious collection of 
mystical verse entitled ' Love's Martyr,' one poem in 
which, ' a poetical essay of the Phoenix and the Turtle,' 
was signed 'William Shakespeare.'^ 

The First Folio was printed at the press in the Bar- 
bican, which Jaggard had acquired of Roberts. Upon 
Blount probably fell the chief labour of seeing the 

1 See p. 190. 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 317 

work through the press. It was in progress through- 
out 1623, and had so far advanced by November 8, 
1623, that on that day Edward Blount and Isaac 
(son of WiUiam) Jaggard obtained formal license 
from the Stationers' Company to pubhsh sixteen 
of the twenty hitherto unprinted plays that it was 
intended to include. The pieces, whose approach- 
ing publication for the first time was thus an- 
nounced, were of supreme hterary interest. The titles 
ran: 'The Tempest,' 'The Two Gentlemen,' 'Measure 
for Measure,' 'Comedy of Errors,' 'As You Like It,' 
'All's Well,' 'Twelfth Night,' 'Winter's Tale,' '3 
Henry VI," Henry VIII," Coriolanus,"Timon,' 'Julius 
Caesar,' 'Macbeth,' 'Antony and Cleopatra,' and ' Cym- 
beHne.' Four other hitherto unprinted dramas for 
which no license was sought figured in the volume, 
viz. ' King John,' ' i and 2 Henry VI,' and the ' Tam- 
ing of the Shrew ' ; but each of these plays was based 
by Shakespeare on a play of like title which had been 
published at an earlier date, and the absence of a license 
was doubtless due to an ignorant misconception on the 
part either of the Stationers' Company's officers or of 
the editors of the volume as to the true relations subsist- 
ing between the old pieces and the new. The only play 
by Shakespeare that had been previously published 
and was not included in the First Folio was ' Pericles.' 
Thirty-six pieces in all were thus brought together. 
The volume consisted of nearly one thousand double- 
column pages and was sold at a pound a copy. From 
the number of copies that survive it may be esti- 
mated that the edition numbered 500. The book was 



3,1 8 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

described on the title-page as published by Edward 
Blount and Isaac Jaggard, and in the colophon as 
printed at the charges of 'W. Jaggard, I. Smithweeke, 
and W. Aspley/ as well as of Blount.^ On the title- 
page was engraved the Droeshout portrait. Com- 
mendatory verses were supplied by Ben Jonson, Hugh 
^, Holland, Leonard Digges, and I. M., per- 

The pre- _ ^'^ ^ ' ^ 

fatory haps Jaspcr Maine. The dedication was 

addressed to the brothers William Herbert, 
Earl of Pembroke, the Lord Chamberlain, and Philip 
Herbert, Earl of Montgomery, and was signed by 
Shakespeare's friends and fellow-actors, Heming and 
Condell. The same signatures were appended to a 
succeeding address 'to the great variety of readers.' 
In both addresses the two actors made pretension 
to a larger responsibility for the enterprise than they 
really incurred, but their motives in identifying them- 
selves with the venture were doubtless irreproachable. 
They disclaimed (they wrote) ' ambition either of selfe- 
profit or fame in undertaking the design,' being solely 
moved by anxiety to 'keepe the memory of so worthy 
a friend and fellow alive as was our Shakespeare.' 
* It had bene a thing we conf esse worthie to haue bene 
wished,' they inform the reader, 'that the author him- 
selfe had lined to haue set forth and ouerseen his 
owne writings. . . .' A list of contents follows the 
address to the readers. 

The title-page states that all the plays were printed 
'according to the true originall copies.* The dedi- 
cators wrote to the same effect. ' As where (before) 

1 Cf. Bibliographica, i. 489 seq. 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 319 

you were abus'd with diuerse stolne, and surreptitious 
copies, maimed and deformed by the frauds and 
stealthes of iniurious impostors that expos'd them : 
euen those are now offer'd to your view cur'd and 
perfect of their limbes, and all the rest absolute in 
their numbers as he conceived them,' There is no 
doubt that the whole volume was printed from the 
acting versions in the possession of the manager of 
the company with which Shakespeare had been asso- 
ciated. But it is doubtful if any play were printed 
exactly as it came from his pen. The player-editors' 
boastful advertisement that they had access to his 
papers in which there was ' scarce a blot ' admits 
of no literal interpretation. The First Folio text is 
often markedly inferior to that of the sixteen pre- 
The value cxistent quartos, which, although surrep- 
of the text. ^-i^iQ^sly and imperfectly printed, followed 
playhouse copies of far earlier date. From the text 
of the quartos the text of the First Folio differs in- 
variably, although in varying degrees. The quarto 
texts of * Love's Labour's Lost,' * Midsummer Night's 
Dream,' and 'Richard II,' for example, differ very 
largely and always for the better from the folio texts. 
On the other hand, the folio repairs the glaring de- 
fects of the quarto versions of ' The Merry Wives of 
Windsor' and of ' Henry V.' In the case of twenty 
of the plays in the First Folio no quartos exist for com- 
parison, and of these twenty plays, ' Coriolanus,' * All's 
Well,' and * Macbeth ' present a text abounding in 
corrupt passages. 

The plays are arranged under three headings — 



320 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

' Comedies,' ' Histories,' and 'Tragedies' — and each 

division is separately paged. The arrangement of 

the plays in each division follows no prin- 

The order ^ ^ ^ 

of the ciple. The comedy section begins with the 

pl&vs 

* Tempest ' and ends with the * Wmter's 
Tale.' The histories more justifiably begin with 
* King John' and end with 'Henry VHI.' The 
tragedies begin with * Troilus and Cressida ' and end 
with ' Cymbeline.' This order has been usually 
followed in subsequent collective editions. ^ 

As a specimen of typography the First Folio is not 
to be commended. There are a great many con- 
Thetypo- temporary folios of larger bulk far more 
graphy. neatly and correctly printed. It looks as 
though Jaggard's printing ofhce were undermanned. 
The misprints are numerous and are especially 
conspicuous in the pagination. The sheets seem to 
have been worked off very slowly, and corrections 
were made while the press was working, so that 
the copies struck off later differ occasionally from 
the earlier copies. One mark of carelessness on the 
part of the compositor or corrector of the press, which 
is common to all copies, is that ' Troilus and Cressida,' 
though in the body of the book it opens the section 
of tragedies, is not mentioned at all in the table of 
contents, and the play is unpaged except on its second 
and third pages, which bear the numbers 79 and 80. 

Several copies are distinguished by more interest- 
irregular ing irregularities, in some cases unique, 
copies. Copies in the Lenox Library in New York 
and the Barton collection in the Boston Public 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 32 1 

Library, like the copy sold in 1897 to an American 
collector by Bishop John Vertue, include a cancel 
duplicate of a leaf of * As You Like It ' (sheet R of the 
comedies)!; and in Bishop Samuel Butler's copy, of 
which the present whereabouts are unknown, a proof 
leaf of 'Hamlet' was bound up with the corrected 
leaf.2 

The most interesting irregularity yet noticed ap- 
pears in one of the two copies of the book which be- 
longed to the Baroness Burdett-Coutts. This copy is 
known as the Sheldon Folio, having formed in the 
seventeenth century part of the library of Ralph Shel- 
don of Western Manor in the parish of Long Comp- 
ton, Warwickshire.^ In the Sheldon Folio the opening 
-Ph P^&^ of ' Troilus and Cressida,' of which the 

Sheldon rccto or front is occupied by the prologue 

copy. i o 

and the verso or back by the opening lines of 
the text of the play, is followed by a superfluous leaf. 
On the recto or front of the unnecessary leaf* are 

1 Lenox bought his copy at Sotheby's in 1855 ^^^ ^^Z^- i^j* He 
inserted a title-page (inlaid and bearing the wilfully mutilated date 1622) 
from another copy, described in the Variorum Shakespeare of 1 82 1 
(xxi. 449) as in the possession of Messrs. J. and A. Arch, booksellers, 
of Cornhill. 

^ It is described in the Varioruin Shakespeare of 1821, xxi. 449-50. 

^ The copy seems to have been purchased by a member of the 
Sheldon family in 1628, five years after publication. There is a note 
in a contemporary hand which says it was bought for 3/. 15^'., a some- 
what extravagant price. A further entry says that it cost three score 
pounds of silver, i.e. pounds Scot (=60 shillings). The Sheldon family 
arms are on the sides of the volume, and there are many manuscript 
notes in the margin, interpreting difficult words, correcting misprints, 
or suggesting new readings. 

* It has been mutilated by a former owner, and the signature of the 
leaf is missing, but it was presumably G G 3. , 

Y 



322 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

printed the concluding lines of * Romeo and Juliet ' 
in place of the prologue to ' Troilus and Cressida.' 
At the back or verso are the opening lines of * Troi- 
lus and Cressida ' repeated from the preceding page. 
The presence of a different ornamental headpiece on 
each page proves that the two are not taken from the 
same setting of the type. At a later page in the Shel- 
don copy the concluding lines of ' Romeo and Juliet * 
are duly reprinted at the close of the play, and on the 
verso or back of the leaf, which supplies them in their 
right place, is the opening passage, as in other copies, 
of ' Timon of Athens.' These curious confusions 
attest that while the work was in course of composi- 
tion the printers or editoi;s of the volume at one time 
intended to place 'Troilus and Cressida,' with the 
prologue omitted, after * Romeo and Juliet.' The last 
page of ' Romeo and Juliet ' is in all copies numbered 
79, an obvious misprint for yy ; the first leaf of 
' Troilus ' is paged y8 ; the second and third pages of 
* Troilus ' are numbered 79 and 80. It was doubtless 
suddenly determined while the volume was in the 
press to transfer * Troilus and Cressida ' to the head of 
the tragedies from a place near the end, but the num- 
bers on the opening pages which indicated its first 
position were clumsily retained, and to avoid the exten- 
sive typographical corrections that were required by 
the play's change of position, its remaining pages were 
allowed to go forth unnumbered. ^ 

1 The copy of the First Folio, now belonging to Mr. J. Pierpont 
Morgan, of New York, contains a like irregularity. See the present 
writer's Census of Extant Copies of the First Folio, a supplement to the 
Facsimile Reproduction (Oxford 1902). 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 323 

Yet another copy of the First F'olio presents 
unique features of a different kind of interest. Mr. Co- 
Ta crard's ^^i^gsby Sibthorp of Sudbrooke Holme, Lin- 
presenta- coln, Dossesses a copv which has been in the 

tion copy _ ^ •' 

of the First Ubrary of his family for more than a century. 
Folio. ^ .\ 111 . , -^ 

and is beyond doubt one of the very earliest 

that came from the press of the printer William 
Jaggard. The title-page, which bears Shakespeare's 
portrait, is in a condition of unparalleled freshness, 
and the engraving is printed with unusual firmness 
and clearness. Although the copy is not at all points 
perfect and several leaves have been suppHed in 
facsimile, it is a taller copy than any other, being 
thirteen and a half inches high, and thus nearly half 
an inch superior in stature to that of any other known 
copy. The binding, rough calf, is partly original ; 
and on the title-page is a manuscript inscription, in 
contemporary handwriting of indisputable authen- 
ticity, attesting that the copy was a gift to an 
intimate friend by the printer Jaggard. The inscrip- 
tion reads thus : 



Stm y^n0 0y^^faay9^j^0£r^M 



The fragment of the original binding is stamped with 
an heraldic device, in which a muzzled bear holds a 
banner in its left paw and in its right a squire's 
helmet. There is a crest of a bear's head above, and 
beneath is a scroll with the motto ' Augusta Vincenti ' 
{i.e. * proud things to the conqueror'). This motto 
proves to be a pun on the name of the owner of 
the heraldic badge — Augustine Vincent, a highly 



324 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

respected official of the College of Arms, who is 
known from independent sources to have been, at 
the date of the publication, in intimate relations with 
the printer of the First Folio. ^ It is therefore clear 
that it was to Augustine Vincent that Jaggard pre- 

1 Shortly before this great Shakespearean enterprise was undertaken, 
Vincent the herald and Jaggard the printer had been jointly the object 
of a violent and slanderous attack by a perverse-tempered personage 
named Ralph Brooke. This Brooke was one of Vincent's colleagues at 
the College of Arms. He could never forgive the bestowal, some years 
earlier, of an office superior to his own on an outsider, a stranger to the 
College, William Camden, the distinguished writer on history and 
archaeology. From that time forth he made it the business of his life 
to attack in print Camden and his friends, of whom Vincent was one. 
He raised objection to the grant of arms to Shakespeare, for which 
Camden would seem to have been mainly responsible (seep. i()(), supra) . 
His next step was to compile and publish a Catalogue of the Nobility, 
a sort of controversial Peerage, in which he claimed, with abusive 
vigour, to expose Camden and his friends' ignorance of the genealogies 
of the great families of England. . Brooke's book was printed in 1619 
by Jaggard. The Camden faction discovered in it abundance of dis- 
creditable errors. The errors were due, Brooke replied, in a corrected 
edition of 1622, to the incompetence of his printer, Jaggard. Then 
Augustine Vincent, Camden's friend, the first owner of the Sibthorp 
copy of the First Folio, set himself to prove Brooke's pretentious incom- 
petence and malignity. Jaggard, who resented Brooke's aspersions on 
his professional skill in typography, not only printed and published 
Vincent's Discovery of Brooke's Errors, as Vincent entitled his reply, 
but inserted in Vincent's volume a personal vindication of his printing- 
office from Brooke's strictures. Vincent's denunciation of Brooke, to 
which Jaggard contributed his caustic preface, was published in 1622, 
and gave Brooke his quietus. Incidentally, Jaggard and his ally Vincent 
avenged Brooke's presumptuous criticism of the great dramatist's right 
to the arms that the Heralds' College, at the instance of Vincent's friend 
Camden, had granted him long before. Next year Jaggard engaged 
in the great enterprise of the Shakespeare First Folio. Nothing was 
more appropriate than that Jaggard should present his friend and 
fellow-victor in the recent strife with an early copy of the volume that 
was to set the fame of Shakespeare on an everlasting foundation. (See 
art. by present writer in Cornhill Magazine, April 1899.) 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 32$ 

sented as a free gift one of the first copies of this great 
volume which came from his press. The inscription 
on the title-page is in Vincent's handwriting. 

A copy of the FoUo delivered in sheets by the 
Stationers' Company late in 1623 to the librarian of 
the Bodleian Library, Oxford, was sent for binding 
to an Oxford binder on February 17, 1623-4, and, 
being duly returned to the library, was chained to the 
shelves. The volume, which was sold by the curators 
of the Bodleian as a duplicate on purchasing a copy 
of the Third Folio in 1654, was in 1906 re-purchased 
for the Bodleian from Mr. W. G. Turbutt of Ogsdon 
Hall, Derbyshire, an ancestor of whom seems to have 
acquired it soon after it left the Bodleian Library.^ 

The First Folio is intrinsically the most valuable 
volume in the whole range of English literature, and 
extrinsically is only exceeded in value by some half- 
dozen volumes of far earlier date and of exceptional 
typographical interest. The number of surviving 
Estimated copics cxcccds ouc hundred and eighty, of 
extTnt^^ °^ which one- third are now in America.^ Seve- 
copies. j-g^j qI j^Y^Q extant copies are very defective, 
and most have undergone extensive reparation. Only 
fourteen are in a perfect state, that is, with the por- 
trait /r/;^/^<^(;2^/ inlaid') on the title-page, and the fly- 
leaf facing it, with all the pages succeeding it, intact 

^ The Original Bodleian Copy of the First Folio of Shakespeare^ 
by F. Madan, G. R. M. Turbutt, and S. Gibson, Oxford, 1905, fol. 

2 160 copies were described by me" in Census of Extant Copies 
appended to the Oxford Facsimile of the First Folio (1902), and 
ioyxxtttu 2.^di\\!\.oxi2X coY^&% '\n Notes and Additions to the Census, 1906. 
Five further copies have since come under my notice. 



326 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

and uninjured. (The flyleaf contains Ben Jonson's 
verses attesting the truthfulness of the portrait.) 
Excellent copies in this enviable state are in the 
Grenville Library at the British Museum, and in 
the libraries of the Duke of Devonshire, the Earl of 
Crawford, the Baroness Burdett-Coutts, and Mr. A. H. 
Huth. Of these the finest and cleanest is the ' Daniel ' 
copy which belonged to the late Baroness Burdett- 
Coutts. It measures 13 inches by 8 J, and was pur- 
chased by the Baroness for 716/. 2s. at the^sale of 
George Daniel's library in 1864. This comparatively 
small sum was long the highest price paid for the 
book. A perfect copy, measuring 12^q inches by y\^, 
fetched 840/. (4,200 dollars), at the sale of Mr. Bray- 
ton Ives's library in New York, in March 1891. A 
perfect copy, measuring 13I inches by 8f, was pri- 
vately purchased for more than 1,000/. by Mr. J. Pier- 
pont Morgan, of New York, in June 1899, of Mr. C.J. 
Toovey, bookseller, of Piccadilly, London. A copy 
measuring i2|- inches by 8|, which had long been in 
Belgium, was purchased by Mr. Bernard Buchanan 
Macgeorge, of Glasgow, for 1,700/., at a London sale, 
July II, 1899, and was in June 1905 sold, with copies 
of the Second, Third and Fourth Fohos, to Mr. Mars- 
den J. Perry, of Providence, U.S.A., for an aggregate 
sum of 10,000/. On March 23, 1907, the copy of 
the First Folio formerly in the library of the late 
Frederick Locker-Lampson. of Rowfant, fetched at 
Sotheby's 3,600/. ; this is the largest sum yet real- 
ised at public auction.^ 

1 A reprint of the First Folio unwarrantedly purporting to be exact 
was published in 1807-8 ; it bears the imprint * E. and J. Wright, 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 327 

The Second Folio edition was printed in 1632 by 

Thomas Cotes for John Smethwick, WiUiam Aspley, 

Richard Hawkins, Richard Meighen and Robert Allot, 

each of whose names figures as publisher 

Second on different copies. To Allot, whose name 
Folio. . , . , 

is most oiten met with on the title-page, 

Blount had transferred, on November 16, 1630, his 
rights in the sixteen plays which were first licensed 
for publication in 1623.1 The Second Folio was re- 
printed from the First ; a few corrections were made 
in the text, but most of the changes were arbitrary 
and needless. Charles I's copy is at Windsor, and 
Charles I I's at the British Museum. The * Perkins 
Folio,' now in the Duke of Devonshire's possession, 
in which John Payne Collier introduced forged emen- 
dations, was a copy of that of 1632.2 The highest 

St. John's Square [Clerkenwell].' The best type-reprint was issued in 
three parts by Lionel Booth in 1861, 1863, and 1864, A photo-zinco- 
graphic reproduction, by Sir Henry James and Howard Staunton, ap- 
peared in sixteen parts (Feb. 1864-Oct. 1865). A greatly reduced 
photographic facsimile followed in 1876, with a preface by Halliwell- 
Phillipps. In 1902 the Oxford University Press issued a collotype 
facsimile of the Duke of Devonshire's copy at Chatsworth, with intro- 
duction and a census of copies by the present writer. * Notes and 
Additions to the Census' followed in 1906. 

1 Arber, Stationers' Registers, iii. 242-3. 

2 On January 31, 1852, Collier announced in the Athenceuin, that 
this copy, which had been purchased by him for thirty shillings, and 
bore on the outer cover the words ^Tho. Perkins his Booked was anno- 
tated throughout by a former owner in the middle of the seventeenth 
century. Shortly afterwards Collier published all the ' essential ' manu- 
script readings in a volume entitled Notes a^id Emendations to the Plays 
of Shakespeare. Next year he presented the folio to the Duke of 
Devonshire. A warm controversy followed, but in 1859 Mr. N. E. S. A. 
Hamilton, of the British Museum, in letters to the Times of July 2 
and 16 pronounced the manuscript notes to be recent fabrications in a 
simulated seventeenth-century hand. 



328 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

price paid at public auction is 690/., for which Mr. 
Perry of Providence bought one with Smethwick's 
imprint March 21, 1902. Mr. Macgeorge acquired 
for 540/. at the Earl of Orford's sale in 1895 the copy 
formerly belonging to George Daniel ; this passed to 
Mr. Perry in 1905 with copies of the First, Third 
and Fourth Folios for 10,000/. The Third Folio — 
mainly a reprint of the Second — was first published 
in 1663 by Peter Chetwynde, who reissued it next 
The Third year with the addition of seven plays,_six of 
F°^^°- which have no claim to admission among 

Shakespeare's works. * Unto this impression,' runs 
the title-page of 1664, 'is added seven Playes never 
before printed in folio, viz. : Pericles, Prince of Tyre. 
The London Prodigal. The History of Thomas Ld. 
Cromwell. Sir John Oldcastle, Lord Cobham. The 
Puritan Widow. A Yorkshire Tragedy. The Tra- 
gedy of Locrine.' The six spurious pieces were 
attributed by unprincipled publishers to Shakespeare 
in his lifetime. Fewer copies of the Third Folio are 
reputed to be extant than of the Second or Fourth, 
owing to the alleged destruction of many unsold 
impressions in the Fire of London in 1666. On 
June I, 1907, a copy of the 1663 impression fetched 
The Fourth ^t Sotheby's the record price of 1,550/. 
Folio. -p^g Fourth Folio, printed in 1685 'for H. 

Harringman, E. Brewster, R. Chiswell, and R. Bent- 
ley,' reprints the folio of 1664 without change except 
in the way of modernising the spelling. Two hundred 
and fifteen pounds is the highest price yet reached 
at public auction. 



BIBLIOGRAPHY • 329 

Since 1685 some two hundred independent 

editions of the collected works have been published 

in Great Britain and Ireland, and many 

Eighteenth- / 

century thousand editions of separate plays. The 
eighteenth-century editors of the collected 
works endeavoured with varying degrees of success 
to purge the text of the numerous incoherences of 
the folios, and to restore, where good taste or good 
sense required it, the lost text of the contemporary 
quartos. It is largely owing to a due co-ordination 
of the results of the efforts of the eighteenth-cen- 
tury editors by their successors in the nineteenth cen- 
tury that Shakespeare's work has become intelHgible 
to general readers unversed in textual criticism, and 
has won from them the veneration that it merits.^ 

Nicholas Rowe, a popular dramatist of Queen 
Anne's reign, and poet laureate to George I, was the 
first critical editor of Shakespeare. He produced an 
edition of his plays in six octavo volumes in 1709. 
,,. , , A new edition in eisrht volumes followed in 

Nicholas ^ 

Rowe, 1 7 14, and another hand added a ninth 

volume which included the poems. Rowe 
prefixed a valuable life of the poet embodying tra- 
ditions which were in danger of perishing without a 
record. His text followed that of the Fourth FoHo. 
The plays were printed in the same order, and 
* Pericles ' and the six spurious pieces brought to- 
gether at the end. Rowe did not compare his text 
with that of the First Folio or of the quartos, but in 

^ The best account of eighteenth-century criticism of Shakespeare 
is to be found in the preface to the Cambridge edition by Dr. Aldis 
"Wright. The memoirs of the various editors in the Dictionary of 
National Biography supply useful information. 



330 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

the case of * Romeo and Juliet ' he met with an early- 
quarto while his edition was passing through the 
press, and inserted at the end of the play the 
prologue which is met with only in the quartos. He 
made a few happy emendations, some of which 
coincide accidentally with the readings of the First 
Folio ; but his text is deformed by many palpable 
errors. His practical experience as a playwright in- 
duced him, however, to prefix for the first time a list of 
dramatis personcB to each play, to divide and number 
acts and scenes on rational principles, and to mark the 
entrances and exits of the characters. Spelling, punc- 
tuation, and grammar he corrected and modernised. 

The poet Pope was Shakespeare's second editor. 
His edition in six spacious quarto volumes was com- 
pleted in 1725. The poems, edited by Dr. 
Pope, George Sewell, with an essay on the rise 

and progress of the stage, and a glossary, ap- 
peared in a seventh volume. Pope had few qualifica- 
tions for the task, and the venture was a commercial 
failure. In his preface Pope, while he fully re- 
cognised Shakespeare's native genius, deemed his 
achievement deficient in artistic quality. Pope 
claimed to have collated the text of the Fourth Folio 
with that of all preceding editions, and although his 
work indicates that he had access to the First Folio 
and some of the quartos, it is clear that his text 
was based on that of Rowe. His innovations are 
numerous, and are derived from 'his private sense 
and conjecture,' but they are often plausible and 
ingenious. He was the first to indicate the place of 
each new scene, and he improved on Rowe's subdivi- 



BIBLIOGRAPHY ^ 33 1 

sion of the scenes. A second edition of Pope's version 
in ten duodecimo volumes appeared in 1728 with 
Sewell's name on the title-page as well as Pope's. 
There were few alterations in the text, though a pre- 
liminary table supplied a list of twenty-eight quartos. 
Other editions followed in 1735 and 1768. The last 
was printed at Garrick's suggestion at Birmingham 
from Baskerville's types. 

Pope found a rigorous critic in Lewis Theobald, who, 
although contemptible as a writer of original verse and 
prose, proved himself the most inspired of all the tex- 
tual critics of Shakespeare. Pope savagely 
Theobald, avcngcd himsclf on his censor by holding him 
up to ridicule as the hero of the 'Dunciad.' 
Theobald first displayed his critical skill in 1726 in a 
volume which deserves to rank as a classic in English 
literature. The title runs ' Shakespeare Restored, or 
a specimen of the many errors as well committed as 
unamended by Mr. Pope in his late edition of this 
poet, designed not only to correct the said edition but 
to restore the true reading of Shakespeare in all the 
editions ever yet publish'd.' There at page 137 
appears Theobald's great emendation in Shakespeare's 
account of Falstaff' s death (Henry V, 11. iii. 17) : 

* His nose was as sharp as a pen and a' babbled of 
green fields,' in place of the reading in the old copies, 

* His nose was as sharp as a pen and a table of 
green fields.' In 1733 Theobald brought out his 
edition of Shakespeare in seven volumes. In 1740 it 
reached a second issue. A third edition was pub- 
lished in 1752. Others are dated 1772 and 1773. It 
is stated that 12,860 copies in all were sold. Theobald 



332 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

made the First Folio the basis of his text, although he 
failed to adopt all the correct readings of that version. 
Over 300 original corrections or emendations which he 
made in his edition have become part and parcel of 
the authorised canon. Theobald's principles of textual 
criticism were as enlightened as his practice was 
triumphant. ' I ever labour,' he wrote to Warburton, 

* to make the smallest deviation that I possibly can 
from the text; never to alter at all where I can by 
any means explain a passage with sense ; nor ever 
by any emendation to make the author better when 
it is probable the text came from his own hands.' 
Theobald has every right to the title of the Porson of 
Shakespearean criticism. ^ The following are favour- 
able specimens of his insight. In ' Macbeth '(i. vii. 6) 
for *this bank and school of time,' he substituted 
the familiar 'bank and shoal of time.' In 'Antony 
and Cleopatra' the old copies (v. ii. 87) made 
Cleopatra say of Antony : 

* For his bounty, 

There was no winter in't; an Anthony it was 
That grew the more by reaping. 

For the gibberish ' an Anthony it was,' Theobald read 

* an autumn 'twas,' and thus gave the lines true point 
and poetry. A third notable instance, somewhat 
more recondite, is found in ' Coriolanus ' (11. i. 59-60) 
where Menenius asks the tribunes in the First Folio 
version 'what harm can your besom conspectuities 
[i.e. vision or eyes] glean out of this character } ' 

1 Mr. Churton CoUins's admirable essay on Theobald's textual 
criticism of Shakespeare, entitled ' The Porson of Shakespearean Critics,' 
is reprinted from the Quarterly Review in his Essays and Studies, 
1895, pp. 263 et seq. 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 333 

Theobald replaced the meaningless epithet * besom ' 
by ' bisson ' {i.e. purblind), a recognised Elizabethan 
word which Shakespeare had already employed in 
* Hamlet' (11. ii. 529).! 

The fourth editor was Sir Thomas Hanmer, a 
country gentleman without much literary culture, but 
Sir possessing a large measure of mother wit. 

Hanmer, ^^ ^^^ Speaker in the House of Commons 
1677-1746. for a few months in 1714, and retiring soon 
afterwards from public life devoted his leisure to a 
thoroughgoing scrutiny of Shakespeare's plays. His 
edition, which was the earliest to pretend to typogra- 
phical beauty, was printed at the Oxford University 
Press in 1744 in six quarto volumes. It contained a 
number of gopd engravings by Gravelot after designs 
by Francis Hayman, and was long highly valued by 
book collectors. No editor's name was given. In 
forming his text, Hanmer depended exclusively on 
his own ingenuity. He made no recourse to the old 
copies. The result was a mass of common-sense 
emendations, some of which have been permanently 
accepted.^ Hanmer's edition was reprinted in 1 770-1. 

1 Collier doubtless followed Theobald's hint when he pretended to 
have found in his ' Perkins Folio' the extremely happy emendation (now 
generally adopted) of * bisson multitude ' for ' bosom multipUed ' in 
Coriolanus's speech : 

How shall this bisson multitude digest 

The senate's courtesy? {Cori'olanus, III. i. 131-2). 

2 A happy example of his shrewdness may be quoted from King 
Lear, iir. vi. 72, where in all previous editions Edgar's enumeration of 
various kinds of dogs included the line ' Hound or spaniel, brach or 
hym [or him].' For the last word Hanmer substituted * lym,' which 
was the Elizabethan synonym for bloodhound. 



334 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

In 1747 Bishop Warburton produced a revised 
version of Pope's edition in eight volumes. Warbur- 
Bishop ton was hardly better qualified for the task 
torT'^iegS- than Pope, and such improvements as 
1779- he introduced are mainly borrowed from 

Theobald and Hanmer. On both these critics he 
arrogantly and unjustly heaped abuse in his preface. 
The Bishop was consequently criticised with appro- 
priate severity for his pretentious incompetence by 
many writers ; among them, by Thomas Edwards, 
whose ' Supplement to Warburton's Edition of 
Shakespeare' first appeared in 1747, and, having 
been renamed ' The Canons of Criticism ' next year 
in the third edition, passed through as many as 
seven editions by 1765. 

Dr. Johnson, the sixth editor, completed his edition 

in eight volumes in 1765, and a second issue followed 

three years later. Althousrh he made some 

Dr. John- . -^ . ° 

son, 1709- mdependent collation of the quartos, his 
'^ ' textual labours were slight, and his verbal 

notes show little close knowledge of sixteenth and 
seventeenth century literature. But in his preface 
and elsewhere he displays a genuine, if occasionally 
sluggish, sense of Shakespeare's greatness, and his 
massive sagacity enabled him to indicate convincingly 
Shakespeare's triumphs of characterisation. 

The seventh editor, Edward Capell, advanced on 
his predecessors in many respects. He was 

Edward / . ^ ^ 

Capell, a clumsy writer, and Johnson declared, with 

'^^^ '^ ' some justice, that he 'gabbled monstrously,' 

but his collation of the quartos and the First and 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 335 

Second Folios was conducted on more thorough and 
scholarly methods than those of any of his predecessors, 
not excepting Theobald. His industry was untiring, 
and he is said to have transcribed the whole of Shake- 
speare ten times. Capell's edition appeared in ten 
small octavo volumes in 1768. He showed himself 
well versed in Ehzabethan literature in a volume of 
notes which appeared in 1774, and in three further 
volumes, entitled ' Notes, Various Readings, and the 
School of Shakespeare,' which were not published till 
1783, two years after his death. The last volume, 
' The School of Shakespeare,' comprised ' authentic 
extracts ' from English books of the poet's day.^ 

George Steevens, whose saturnine humour involved 

him in a lifelong series of literary quarrels with rival 

students of Shakespeare, made invaluable 

George ^ _ ^ 

Steevens, Contributions to Shakespearean study. In 

I736-1800. ^^ , . - r 1 1 r 

1760 he reprmted twenty of the plays from 
the quartos. Soon afterwards he revised Johnson's 
edition without much assistance from the Doctor, and 
his revision, which embodied numerous improvements, 
appeared in ten volumes in 1773. It was long 
regarded as the standard version. Steeven's anti- 
quarian knowledge alike of Elizabethan history and 
literature was greater than that of any previous 
editor ; his citations of parallel passages from the 
writings of Shakespeare's contemporaries, in elucida- 
tion of obscure words and phrases, have not been 

^Capell left to Trinity College, Cambridge, his Shakespearean 
library, of which an excellent catalogue ('Capell's Shakespeareana '), 
prepared for the College by Mr. W, W. Greg, was issued in 1903. 



336 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

exceeded in number or excelled in aptness by any of his 
successors. All commentators of recent times are more 
deeply indebted in this department of their labours 
to Steevens than to any other critic. But he lacked 
taste as well as temper, and excluded from his edition 
Shakespeare's sonnets and poems, because, he wrote, 
' the strongest Act of Parliament that could be framed 
would fail to compel readers into their service.'^ 
The second edition of Johnson and Steevens's ver- 
sion appeared in ten volumes in 1778. The third 
edition, published in ten volumes in 1785, was re- 
vised by Steevens's friend, Isaac Reed (1742-1807), a 
scholar of his own type. The fourth and last edition, 
published in Steevens's lifetime, was prepared by 
himself in fifteen volumes in 1793. As he grew 
older, he made some reckless changes in the text, 
chiefly with the unhallowed object of mystifying 
those engaged in the same field. With a malignity 
that was not without humour, he supplied, too, many 
obscene notes to coarse expressions, and he pretended 
that he owed his indecencies to one or other of two 
highly respectable clergymen, Richard Amner and 
John Collins, whose surnames were in each instance 
appended. He had known and quarrelled with both. 
Such proofs of his perversity justified the title which 
Gifford applied to him of 'the Puck of Commentators.' 
Edmund Malone, who lacked Steevens's quick wit 
and incisive style, was a laborious and amiable 
archaeologist, without much ear for poetry or delicate 
literary taste. He threw abundance of new light on 

1 Edition of 1 793, vol. i. p. 7. 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 337 

Shakespeare's biography and on the chronology and 

sources of his works, while his researches into the be- 

erinninffs of the English sta^e added a new 

Edmund 00 00 

Maione, chapter of first-rate importance to English 
literary history. To Maione is due the first 
rational 'attempt to ascertain the order in which the 
plays attributed to Shakespeare were written.' His 
earliest results on the topic were contributed to 
Steevens's edition of 1778. Two years later he 
published, as a supplement to Steevens's work, two 
volumes containing a history of the Elizabethan stage, 
with reprints of Arthur Brooke's ' Romeus and Juliet,' 
Shakespeare's Poems, and the plays falsely ascribed 
to him in the Third and Fourth Folios. A quarrel 
with Steevens followed, and was never closed. In 
1787 Maione issued 'A Dissertation on the Three 
Parts of King Henry VI,' tending to show that those 
plays were not originally written by Shakespeare. 
In 1790 appeared his edition of Shakespeare in ten 
volumes, the first in two parts. 

What is known among booksellers as the * First 
Variorum ' edition of Shakespeare was prepared by 
Variorum Stccvens's friend, Isaac Reed, after Steevens's 
editions. death. It was based on a copy of Steevens's 
work of 1 793, which had been enriched with numerous 
manuscript additions, and it embodied the published 
notes and prefaces of preceding editors. It was pub- 
lished in twenty-one volumes in 1803. The ' Second 
Variorum ' edition, which was mainly a reprint of the 
first, was published in twenty-one volumes in 18 13. 
The ' Third Variorum ' was prepared for the press by 



338 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

James Boswell the younger, the son of Dr. Johnson's 
biographer. It was based on Malone's edition of 1 790, 
but included massive accumulations of notes left in 
manuscript by Malone at his death. Malone had 
been long engaged on a revision of his edition, but 
died in 1812, before it was completed. Boswell's 
' Malone,' as the new work is often called, appeared 
in twenty-one volumes in 182 1. It is the most valu- 
able of all collective editions of Shakespeare's works, 
but the three volumes of preliminary essays on^Shake- 
speare's biography and writings, and the illustrative 
notes brought together in the final volume, are con- 
fusedly arranged and are unindexed ; many of the 
essays and notes break off abruptly at the point at 
which they were left at Malone's death. A new 
' Variorum ' edition, on an exhaustive scale, was under- 
taken by Mr. H. Howard Furness of Philadelphia, and 
sixteen volumes have appeared since 1871 ('Romeo 
and Juliet,' ' Macbeth,' * Hamlet,' 2 vols., ' King Lear,' 
'Othello,' 'Merchant of Venice,' ' As You Like It,' 
' Tempest,' ' Midsummer Night's Dream,' ' Winter's 
Tale,' ' Much Ado,' ' Twelfth Night,' ' Love's Labour's 
Lost,' 'Antony and Cleopatra,' and 'Richard III.' 

Of nineteenth-century editors who have prepared 
collective editions of Shakespeare's work with original 
Nine- annotations those who have best pursued 

cfenTmy ^^^ great traditions of the eighteenth cen- 
editors. ^^J-y g^j-g Alexander Dyce, Howard Staunton, 
Nikolaus Delius, the Cambridge editors William 
George Clark (1821-1 878) and Dr. Aldis Wright, and 
the editors of the ' Bankside ' edition of New York. 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 339 

Alexander Dyce was almost as well read as 
Steevens in Elizabethan literature, and especially in 
the drama of the period, and his edition of Shake- 
speare in nine volumes, which was first pub- 

Alexander ^ ^ ^ 

Dyce, lished in 1857, has many new and valuable 

1798-1869. .,, . ^ ^ , T 

illustrative notes and a tew good textual 

emendations, as well as a useful glossary ; but Dyce's 
annotations are not always adequate, and often tan- 
talise the reader by their brevity. Howard Staunton's 
edition first appeared in three volumes between 1868 

and 1870. He also was well read in con- 
Howard ' 

Staunton, temporary literature and was an acute tex- 

I8IO-I874. , . . TT- • 1 • 1 • 1 

tuai critic. His introductions bring together 
much interesting stage history. Nikolaus Delius's 
^,., , edition was issued at Elberfeld in seven vo- 

Nikolaus 

Deiius, lumes between 1854 and 1861. Delius's text 
1813-1888. . - , ,..,.., , . 

is formed on sound critical principles and is to 

be trusted thoroughly. A fifth edition in two volumes 

appeared in 1882. The Cambridge edition, which 

The Cam- first appeared in nine volumes between 1863 

edhmn, ^^^ 1 866, exhaustively notes the textual 

1863-6. variations of all preceding editions, and 

supplies the best and fullest appaj^atits criticits. (Of 

new editions, one dated 1887 is also in nine volumes, 

and another, dated 1893, in forty volumes.) In 

America the most valuable of recent contributions to 

the textual study of Shakespeare is the 

Bankside * Bankside ' edition of twenty of the plays, 

edition. ^ r ri>i ii-iii 

the first volume of which was published by 
the Shakespeare Society of New York in 1888. 
Twenty volumes have been issued, each under the 



340 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

general editorship of Mr. Appleton Morgan, with a 
critical preface penned by a Shakespearean scholar of 
repute. Of twenty-one selected plays, sixteen were 
printed in quarto before the publication of the First 
Folio, and five were based on older plays by other 
hands, which were also published in quarto before 
the First Folio. In the ' Bankside ' edition the First 
Folio versions and the earlier quarto versions are 
printed in full, face to face, on parallel pages. A 
* Sequel ' to the * Bankside ' edition, published in 
1894, treats in similar fashion the First FoHo text 
of the * Comedy of Errors ' and the text of the Globe 
edition. A second volume of the * Sequel ' is to deal 
with the dialect of Warwickshire. 

Other editors of the complete works of Shake- 
speare of the nineteenth century whose labours, 
although of some value, present fewer distinctive cha- 
racteristics are: William Harness (1825, 8 vols.); 
Samuel Weller Singer (1826, 10 vols., printed at the 
Other Chiswick Press for William Pickering, with 

centoy" ' ^ ^^^^ ^f the poct by Dr. Charles Symmons, 
editions. illustrated by wood engravings by John 
Thompson after Stothard and others; reissued in 
1856 with essays by William Watkiss Lloyd); 
Charles Knight, with discursive notes and pictorial 
illustrations by William Harvey, F. W. Fairholt, and 
others (' Pictorial edition,' 8 vols., including biography 
and the doubtful plays, 1838-43, often reissued under 
different designations); Bryan Waller Procter, z.e. 
Barry Cornwall (1839-43, 3 vols.), illustrated by 
Kenny Meadows; John Payne Collier (184 1-4, 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 34 1 

8 vols. ; another edition, 8 vols., privately printed, 
1878, 4to); Gulian Crommelin Verplanck (1786- 
1870), Vice-Chancellor of the University of New- 
York (New York, in serial parts, 1844-6, and in 3 vols. 
8vo, 1847, with woodcuts after previously published 
designs of Kenny Meadows, William Harvey, and 
others); the Rev. H. N. Hudson, Boston, U.S.A., 
185 1-6, II vols. i6mo (revised and reissued as the 
Harvard edition, Boston, 1881, 20 vols.); Samuel 
Phelps, the actor (1852-4, 2 vols.; another edition, 
1882-4); J- O. Halliwell (1853-61, 15' vols, folio, 
with encyclopaedic variorum annotations and pictorial 
illustrations); Richard Grant White (Boston, U.S.A., 
1857-65, 12 vols.); W. J. Rolfe (New York, 1871-96, 
40 vols.) ; * The Henry Irving Shakespeare,' edited 
by F. A. Marshall and others — with useful notes on 
stage history (8 vols. 1888-90); 'The Temple Shake- 
speare,' concisely edited by Israel Gollancz (40 vols. 
i2mo, 1894-6); and 'The Eversley Shakespeare,' 
edited by C. H. Herford (10 vols. 8vo, 1899). The 
latest complete annotated edition (1909), printed by the 
University Press of Cambridge, Mass., has a general 
introduction and annotations throughout by Sidney 
Lee, with separate introductions to the plays and poems 
by well-known men-of-letters in America and England. 
Of one-volume editions of the unannotated text, 
the best are the Globe, edited by W. G. Clark and 
Dr. Aldis Wright (1864, and constantly reprinted — 
since 1891 with a new glossary); the Leopold (1876), 
from Delius's text, with preface by Dr. Furnivall ; and 
the Oxford, edited by W. J. Craig (1894). 



342 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 



XX 

POSTHUMOUS REPUTATION 

Shakespeare defied at every stage in his career the 
laws of the classical drama. He rode roughshod 
over the unities of time, place, and action. There 
were critics in his day who zealously championed the 
ancient rules, and viewed with distrust any infringe- 
ment of them. But the force of Shakespeare's 
genius — its revelation of new methods of dramatic 
art — was not lost on the lovers of the ancient ways; 
and even those who, to assuage their consciences, 
entered a formal protest against his innovations, 
soon swelled the chorus of praise with which his 
work was welcomed by contemporary playgoers, 
cultured and uncultured alike. The unauthorised 
publishers of 'Troilus and Cressida' in 1608 faith- 
fully echoed public opinion when they prefaced the 
work with the note : ' This author's comedies are so 
framed to the life that they serve for the most com- 
mon commentaries of all actions of our lives, showing 
such a dexterity and power of wit that the most dis- 
pleased with plays are pleased with his comedies. . . . 
So much and such savoured salt of wit is in his 
comedies that they seem for their height of pleasure 
to be born in the sea that brought forth Venus.' 



POSTHUMOUS REPUTATION 343 

Anticipating the final verdict, the editors of the 
First Folio wrote, seven years after Shakespeare's 
death : ' These plays have had their trial already 
and stood out all appeals.' ^ Ben Jonson, the staunch- 
est champion of classical canons, noted that Shake- 
speare 'wanted art,' but he allowed him, 
jonson's in verscs prefixed to the First Folio, the 
first place among all dramatists, includ- 
ing those of Greece and Rome, and claimed that 
all Europe owed him homage: 

Triumph, my Britain, thou hast one to show, 
^ To whom all scenes ^i.e. stages] of Europe homage owe. 
He was not of an age, but for all time. 

In 1630 Milton penned in like strains an epitaph on 
* the great heir of fame ' : 

What needs my Shakespeare for his honoured bones 

The labour of an age in piled stones? 

Or that his hallowed reliques should be hid 

Under a star-ypointing pyramid? 

Dear son of memory, great heir of fame, 

"What need'st thou such weak witness of thy name? 

Thou in our wonder and astonishment 

Hast built thyself a lifelong monument. 

A writer of fine insight who veiled himself under 
the initials I. M. S.^ contributed to the Second 

1 Cf. the opening line of Matthew Arnold's Sonnet on Shake- 
speare : 

Others abide our question. Thou art free. 

2 These letters have been interpreted as standing for the inscription 
' In Memoriam Scriptoris ' as well as for the name of the writer. In the 
latter connection, they have been variously and mconclusively read as 
Jasper Mayne (Student), a young Oxford writer; as John Marston 
(Student or Satirist); and as John Milton (Senior or Student). 



344 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

Folio of 1632 a splendid eulogy. The opening lines 
declare ' Shakespeare's freehold ' to have been 

A mind reflecting ages past, whose clear 
And equal surface can make things appear 
Distant a thousand years, and represent 
Them in their lively colours' just extent. 

It was his faculty 

To outrun hasty time, retrieve the fates, 
Roll back the heavens, blow ope the iron gates 
Of death and Lethe, where (confused) lie 
Great heaps of ruinous mortality. 

Milton and I. M. S. were followed within ten years 
by critics of tastes so varied as the dramatist of 
domesticity Thomas Heywood, the gallant lyrist Sir 
John Suckling, the philosophic and ' ever-memorable ' 
John Hales of Eton, and the untiring versifier of the 
stage and court, Sir William D'Avenant. Before 1640 
Hales is said to have triumphantly established, in a 
public dispute held with men of learning in his rooms 
at Eton, the proposition that * there was no subject 
of which any poet ever writ but he could produce it 
much better done in Shakespeare.' ^ Leonard Digges 

1 Charles Gildon in 1694, in ' Some Reflections on Mr. Rymer's 
Short View of Tragedy ' which he addressed to Dryden, gives the 
classical version of this incident. ' To give the world,' Gildon informs 
Dryden, * some satisfaction that Shakespear has had as great a Venera- 
tion paid his Excellence by men of unquestion'd parts as this I now 
express of him, I shall give some account of what 1 have heard from 
your Mouth, Sir, about the noble Trmmph he gain'd over all the 
Ancients by the Judgment of the ablest Critics of that time. The 
Matter of Fact (if my Memory fail me not) was this. Mr. Hales of Eaton 
affirm'd that he wou'd shew all the Poets of Antiquity outdone by 
Shakespear, in all the Topics, and common places made use of in Poetry. 
The Enemies of Shakespear wou'd by no means yield him so much 
Excellence : so that it came to a Resolution of a trial of skill upon that 



POSTHUMOUS REPUTATION 345 

(in the 1640 edition of the * Poems') asserted that 

every revival of Shakespeare's plays drew crowds to 

pit, boxes, and galleries alike. At a little later date, 

Shakespeare's plays were the * closet companions ' of 

Charles I's 'solitudes.'^ 

After the Restoration pubhc taste in England 

veered towards the French and classical dramatic 

models.^ Shakespeare's work was subjected to some 

unfavourable criticism as the product of 
1660-1702. 

nature to the exclusion of art, but the eclipse 

proved more partial and temporary than is commonly 

admitted. The pedantic censure of Thomas Rymer 

on the score of Shakespeare's indifference to the 

classical canons attracted attention, but awoke in 

England no substantial echo. In his * Short View of 

Tragedy' (1692) Rymer mainly concentrated his 

attention on ' Othello,' and reached the eccentric 

•conclusion that it was * a bloody farce without salt or 

savour.' In Pepys's eyes * The Tempest ' had ' no 

great wit,' and ' Midsummer Night's Dream ' was 

' the most insipid and ridiculous play ' ; yet this 

Subject; the place agreed on for the Dispute was Mr. Hales's Chamber 
at Eaton; a great many Books were sent down by the Enemies of 
this Poet, and on the appointed day my Lord Falkland, Sir John 
Suckling, and all the Persons of Quality that had Wit and Learning, 
and interested themselves in the Quarrel, met there, and upon a thorough 
Disquisition of the point, the Judges chose by agreement out of this 
Learned and Ingenious Assembly unanimously gave the Preference to 
Shakespear. And the Greek and Roman Poets were adjudg'd to 
Vail at least their Glory in that of the English Hero.' 

1 Milton, Iconodastes, 1690, pp. 9-10. 

^ Cf. Evelyn's Diary, November 26, 1661 : 'I saw Hamlet, 
Prince of Denmark, played, but now the old plays began to disgust 
the refined age, since His Majesty's being so long abroad.' 



346 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

exacting critic witnessed thirty-six performances of 
twelve of Shakespeare's plays between October ii, 
1660, and February 6, 1668-9, seeing 'Hamlet' 
four times, and * Macbeth,' which he admitted to be 
* a most excellent play for variety,' nine times. 
Dryden's Dryden, the literary dictator of the day, 
view. repeatedly complained of Shakespeare's in- 

equalities — ' he is the very Janus of poets.' ^ But in 
almost the same breath Dryden declared that Shake- 
speare was held in as much veneration among English- 
men as ^schylus among the Athenians, and that ' he 
was the man who of all modern and perhaps ancient 
poets had the largest and most comprehensive soul. . . . 
When he describes anything, you more than see it — 
you feel it too.' ^ In 1693, when Sir Godfrey Kneller 
presented Dryden with a copy of the Chandos portrait 
of Shakespeare, the poet acknowledged the gift thus : 

TO SIR GODFREY KNELLER. 

Shakespear, thy Gift, I place before my sight; 
With awe, I ask his Blessing ere I write; 
With Reverence look on his Majestick Face; 
Proud to be less, but of his Godlike Race. 
His Soul Inspires me, while thy Praise I write, 
And I, like Teucer^ under Ajax fight. 

Writers of Charles II's reign of such opposite 
temperaments as Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of 

1 Conquest of Granada y 1672. 

2 Essay oji Dramatic Poesie, 1668. Some interesting, if more 
qualified, criticism by Dryden also appears in his preface to an adapta- 
tion of * Troilus and Cressida ' in 1679. In the prologue to his and 
D'Avenant's adaptation of ' The Tempest ' in 1676, he wrote : 

But Shakespeare's magic could not copied be ; 
Within that circle none durst walk but he. 



POSTHUMOUS REPUTATION 347 

Newcastle, and Sir Charles Sedley vigorously argued 
for Shakespeare's supremacy. As a girl the sober 
duchess declares she fell in love with Shakespeare. In 
her * Sociable Letters,' which were published in 1664, 
she enthusiastically, if diffusely, described how Shake- 
speare creates the illusion that he had been 'trans- 
formed into every one of those persons he hath 
described,' and suffered all their emotions. When 
she witnessed one of his tragedies she felt persuaded 
that she was witnessing an episode in real life. 

* Indeed,' she concludes, * Shakespeare had a clear 
judgment, a quick wit, a subtle observation, a deep 
apprehension, and a most eloquent elocution,' The 
profligate Sedley, in a prologue to the * Wary Widdow,' 
a comedy by one Higden, produced in 1693, apostro- 
phised Shakespeare thus : 

Shackspear whose fruitfull Genius, happy wit 

Was fram'd and finisht at a lucky hit 

The pride of Nature, and the shame of Schools, 

* Born to Create, and not to Learn from Rules. 

Many adaptations of Shakespeare's plays were 
contrived to meet current sentiment of a less admirable 
type. But they failed efficiently to supersede the 
originals. Dryden and D'Avenant converted ' The 
Tempest ' into an opera (1670). D'Avenant single- 
handed adapted 'The Two Noble Kinsmen' (1668) 

and 'Macbeth' (1674). Dryden dealt simi- 
tion adap- larly with ' Troilus ' (1679) ; Thomas Duffett 

with 'The Tempest' (1675) ; Shadwell with 
'Timon' (1678); Nahum Tate with 'Richard II' 
(1681), ' Lear' (1681), and ' Coriolanus ' (1682); John 



348 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

Crownewith' Henry VI '(1681); D'Urfeywith ' Cym- 
beline ' (1682) ; Ravenscroft with ' Titus Andronicus * 
(1687); Otway with 'Romeo and Juliet' (1692), and 
John Sheffield, Duke of Buckingham, with 'Julius 
Caesar ' (1692). But during the same period the chief 
actor of the day, Thomas Betterton, won his spurs as 
the interpreter of Shakespeare's leading parts, often 
in unrevised versions. Hamlet was accounted that 
actor's masterpiece.^ * No succeeding tragedy for 
several years,' wrote Downes, the prompter at Better- 
ton's theatre, 'got more reputation or money to the 
company than this.' 

From the accession of Queen Anne to the present 
day the tide of Shakespeare's reputation, both on the 
From 1702 stage and among critics, has flowed onward 
onwards, almost Uninterruptedly. The censorious 
critic, John Dennis, in his ' Letters ' on Shakespeare's 
'genius,' gave his work in 1711 whole-hearted com- 
mendation, and two of the greatest men of letters of 
the eighteenth century. Pope and Johnson, although 
they did not withhold all censure, paid him, as we have 
seen, the homage of becoming his editor. The school 
of textual criticism which Theobald and Capell founded 
in the middle years of the century has never ceased 
its activity since their day.^ Edmund Malone's devo- 

1 Cf. Shakspere''s Century of Praise, 1 591-1693, New Shakspere 
See, ed. Ingleby and Toulmin Smith, 1879; and Fresh Alhisions, ed. 
Furnivall, 1886. 

2 W. Sidney Walker (i 795-1 846), sometime Fellow of Trinity College, 
Cambridge, deserves special mention among textual critics of the nine- 
teenth century. He was author of two valuable works : Shakespeare's 
Versification audits apparent Irregularities explained by Examples from 



POSTHUMOUS REPUTATION 349 

tion at the end of the eighteenth century to the bio- 
graphy of the poet and the contemporary history of 
the stage, secured for him a vast band of disciples, of 
whom Joseph Hunter and John Payne ColHer well 
deserve mention. But of all Malone's successors, 
James Orchard Halliwell, afterwards Halliwell-Phil- 
Iipps(i820-i889), has made the most important addi- 
tions to our knowledge of Shakespeare's biography. 

Meanwhile, at the beginning of the nineteenth 
century, there arose a third school to expound exclu- 
sively the aesthetic excellence of the plays. In its in- 
ception the aesthetic school owed much to the methods 
of Schlegel and other admiring critics of Shakespeare 
in Germany. But Coleridge in his * Notes and Lec- 
tures ' ^ and Hazlitt in his * Characters of Shake- 
speare's Plays' (1817) are the best representatives 
of the aesthetic school in this or any other country. 
Although Professor Dowden, in his ' Shakespeare, his 
Mind and Art ' ( 1 874), and Mr. Swinburne in his ' Study 
of Shakespeare '(1880), are worthy followers, Coleridge 
and Hazlitt remain as aesthetic critics unsurpassed. In 



Early and Late English Writers, 1854, and A Critical Examination 
of the Text of Shakespeare, with Remarks on his Language and that of 
his Contemporaries, together tvith Notes on his Plays and Poems, i860, 
3 vols. Walker's books were published from his notes after his death, 
and are ill-arranged and unindexed, but they constitute a rich quarry, 
which no succeeding editor has neglected without injury to his work. 

1 See Notes and Lectures on Shakespeare and other Poets by S. T. 
Coleridge, now first collected by. T. Ashe, 1883. Coleridge hotly resented 
the remark, which he attributed to Wordsworth, that a German critic 
first taught us to think correctly concerning Shakespeare. (Coleridge to 
Mudford, 1 81 8; cf. Dykes Campbell's memoir of Coleridge, p. cv.) But 
there is much to be said for Wordsworth's general view {see p. 344, 7iote i ) . 



350 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

the effort to supply a fuller interpretation of Shake- 
speare's works — textual, historical, and aesthetic — two 
publishing societies have done much valuable work. 
'The Shakespeare Society' was founded in 1841 by 
Collier, Halliwell, and their friends, and published 
some forty-eight volumes before its dissolution in 1853. 
The New Shakspere Society, which was founded by 
Dr. Furnivall in 1874, issued during the ensuing 
twenty years twenty-seven publications, illustrative 
mainly of the text and of contemporary life and 
literature. 

In 1769 Shakespeare's * jubilee' was celebrated 
for three days (September 6-8) at Stratford, under 
Stratford the direction of Garrick, Dr. Arne, and 
festivals. Boswell. The festivities were repeated 
on a small scale in April 1827 and April 1830. 
*The Shakespeare tercentenary festival,' which was 
held at Stratford from April 23 to May 4, 1864, 
claimed to be a national celebration.^ 

On the English stage the name of every eminent 
actor since Betterton, the great actor of the period 
^ , of the Restoration, has been identified 

On the ' 

English with Shakespearean parts. Steele, writing 
in the 'Tatler' (No. 167) in reference to 
Betterton's funeral in the cloisters of Westminster 
Abbey on May 2, 1710, instanced his rendering of 
Othello as proof of an unsurpassable talent in 
realising Shakespeare's subtlest conceptions on the 
stage. One great and welcome innovation in Shake- 

1 R. E. Hunter, Shakespeare and the Tercentenary Celebratioji^ 
1864. 



POSTHUMOUS REPUTATION 35 I 

spearean acting is closely associated with Betterton's 
name. He encouraged the substitution, that was in- 
The first auguratcd by Killigrew, of women for boys 
of actresses 1^ female parts. The first rdle that was pro- 
m Shake- fessionally rendered by a woman in a public 
parts. theatre was that of Desdemona in * Othello,' 

apparently on December 8, 1660.^ The actress on 
that occasion is said to have been Mrs. Margaret 
Hughes, Prince Rupert's mistress; but Betterton's wife, 
who was at first known on the stage as Mrs. Saunder- 
son, was the first actress to present a series of Shake- 
speare's great female characters. Mrs. Betterton gave 
her husband powerful support, from 1663 onwards, in 
such roles as Ophelia, Juliet, Queen Katherine, and Lady 
Macbeth. Betterton formed a school of actors who 
carried on his traditions for many years after his death. 
Robert Wilks (1670-1732) as Hamlet, and Barton 
Booth (1681-1733) as Henry VHI and Hotspur, were 
popularly accounted no unworthy successors. Colley 
Gibber (1671-1757) as actor, theatrical manager, and 
dramatic critic, was both a loyal disciple of Betterton 
and a lover of Shakespeare, though his vanity and his 
faith in the ideals of the Restoration incited him to 
perpetrate many outrages on Shakespeare's text when 
preparing it for theatrical representation. His noto- 
rious adaptation of * Richard HI,' which was first 

1 Thomas Jordan, a very humble poet, wrote a prologue to notify 
the new procedure, and referred to the absurdity of the old custom : 

For to speak truth, men act, that are between 
Forty and fifty, wenches of fifteen 
With bone so large and nerve so uncompliant. 
When you call Desdemona, enter Giant. 



352 WILLIAM shai<:espEare 

produced in i/oo, long held the stage to the exclusion 
of the original version. But towards the middle of 
the eighteenth century all earlier efforts to interpret 
Shakespeare in the playhouse were eclipsed in public 
esteem by the concentrated energy and intelligence 
of David Garrick. Garrick's enthusiasm for the poet 
and his histrionic genius riveted Shakespeare's hold 
on public taste. His claim to have restored to the 
stage the text of Shakespeare — purified of Restora- 
tion defilements — cannot be allowed without serious 
qualifications. Garrick had no scruple in presenting 
plays of Shakespeare in versions that he or 

Garrick, his fricnds had recklessly garbled. He sup- 
1717—1779. 

plied * Romeo and Juliet ' with a happy 

ending ; he converted the ' Taming of The Shrew ' into 
the farce of * Katherine and Petruchio,' 1754; he 
introduced radical changes in ' Antony and Cleopatra,' 
' Two Gentlemen of Verona,' ' Cymbeline,' and ' Mid- 
summer Night's Dream.' Nevertheless, no actor has 
won an equally exalted reputation in so vast and 
varied a repertory of Shakespearean ro/es. His trium- 
phant debut as Richard HI in 1741 was followed by 
equally successful performances of Hamlet, Lear, 
Macbeth, King John, Romeo, Henry IV, lago, 
Leontes, Benedick, and Antony in ' Antony and 
Cleopatra.' Garrick was not quite undeservedly 
buried in Westminster Abbey on February i, 1779, at 
the foot of Shakespeare's statue. 

Garrick was ably seconded by Mrs. Clive (171 1- 
1785), Mrs. Gibber (1714-1 766), and Mrs. Pritchard 
(1711-1768). Mrs. Gibber as Constancein 'King John,' 



POSTHUMOUS REPUTATION 353 

and Mrs. Pritchard in Lady Macbeth, excited some- 
thing of the same enthusiasm as Garrick in Richard III 
and Lear. There were, too, contemporary critics who 
judged rival actors to show in certain parts powers 
equal, if not superior, to those of Garrick. Charles 
Macklin (1697 ? -1797) for nearly half a century, from 
1735 to 1785, gave many hundred performances of a 
masterly rendering of Shylock. The character had, 
for many years previous to Macklin's assumption of it, 
been allotted to comic actors, but Macklin effectively 
concentrated his energy on the tragic significance of 
the part with an effect that Garrick could not surpass. 
Macklin was also reckoned ^successful in Polonius and 
lago. John Henderson, the Bath Roscius(i 747-1 785), 
who, like Garrick, was buried in Westminster Abbey, 
derived immense popularity from his representation 
of Falstaff; while in subordinate characters like 
Mercutio, Slender, Jaques, Touchstone, and Sir Toby 
Belch, John Palmer (1742 .^-1798) was held to ap- 
proach perfection. But Garrick was the accredited 
chief of the theatrical profession until his death. He 
Was then succeeded in his place of predominance by 
John Philip Kemble, who derived invaluable support 
from his association with one abler than himself, 
his sister, Mrs, Siddons. 

Somewhat stilted and declamatory in speech, 
Kemble enacted a wide range of characters of 
John Shakespearean tragedy with a dignity that 

Kemble, ^on the admiration of Pitt, Sir Walter 
1757-1823. Scott, Charles Lamb, and Leigh Hunt. 
Coriolanus was regarded as his masterpiece, but his 

2A 



354 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

renderings of Hamlet, King John, Wolsey, the Duke in 
* Measure for Measure,' Leontes, and Brutus satisfied 

the most exacting canons of contemporary 
Siddons, theatrical criticism. Kemble's sister, Mrs. 

Siddons, was the greatest actress that Shake- 
speare's countrymen have known. Her noble and 
awe-inspiring presentation of Lady Macbeth, her 
Constance, her Queen Katherine, have, according to 
the best testimony, not been equalled even by the 
achievements of the eminent actresses of France. 

During the nineteenth century the most con^ 
spicuous histrionic successes in Shakespearean drama 
^, ^ were won by Edmund Kean, whose trium- 

Edmund •' _ ' 

Kean, phaut rendering of Shylock on his first ap- 

pearance at Drury Lane Theatre on January 
26, 1 8 14, is one of the most stirring incidents in the 
history of the English stage. Kean defied the rigid 
convention of the ' Kemble School,' and gave free rein 
to his impetuous passions. Besides Shylock, he ex- 
celled in Richard HI, Othello, Hamlet, and Lear. No 
less a critic than Coleridge declared that to see him 
act was like * reading Shakespeare by flashes of 
lightning.' Among other Shakespearean actors of 
Kean's period a high place was allotted by public 
esteem to George Frederick Cooke (1756-181 1), whose 
Richard HI, first given in London at Covent Garden 
Theatre, October 31, 1801, was accounted his master- 
piece. Charles Lamb, writing in 1822, declared that 
of all the actors who flourished in his time, Robert 
Bensley 'had most of the swell of soul,' and Lamb 
gave with a fine enthusiasm in his ' Essays of Elia * 



POSTHUMOUS REPUTATION 355 

an analysis (which has become classical) of Bensley's 
performance of Malvolio. But Bensley's powers were 
rated more moderately by more experienced play- 
goers. ^ Lamb's praises of Mrs. Jordan (1762-18 16) in 
Ophelia, Helena, and Viola in 'Twelfth Night,' are cor- 
roborated by the eulogies of Hazlitt and Leigh Hunt. 
In the part of Rosalind Mrs. Jordan is reported on 
all sides to have beaten Mrs. Siddons out of the field. 

The torch thus lit by Garrick, by the Kembles, 
by Kean and his contemporaries was worthily kept 
alive by William Charles Macready, a cultivated and 
conscientious actor, who, during a professional career 
v^iiiiam of more than forty years (1810-1851), as- 
Ma^ready, sumcd cvcry great part in Shakespearean 
1793-1873- tragedy. Although Macready lacked the 
classical bearing of Kemble or the intense passion of 
Kean, he won as the interpreter of Shakespeare the 
whole-hearted suffrages of the educated public. Mac- 
ready's chief associate in women characters was Helen 
Faucit ( 1 820-1 898, afterwards Lady Martin), whose 
refined impersonations of Imogen, Beatrice, Juliet, 
and Rosalind form an attractive chapter in the history 
of the stage. 

The most notable tribute paid to Shakespeare 
by any actor-manager of recent times was paid by 
Samuel Phelps (i 804-1 878), who gave during his 
Recent tenure of Sadler's Wells Theatre between 
revivals. jg^^ and 1 862 Competent representations of 
all the plays save six; only * Richard II,' the three 
parts of ' Henry VI,' ' Troilus and Cressida,' and ' Titus 

1 Essays of Elia^ ed. Canon Ainger, pp. 180 et seq. 



356 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

Andronicus ' were omitted. The ablest actress who ap- 
peared with Phelps at Sadler's Wells was Mrs. Warner 
( 1 804-1 854), who had previously supported Macready 
in many Shakespearean dramas, and was a partner in 
Phelps's Shakespearean speculation in the early days of 
the venture. Sir Henry Irving ( 1 838-1905), who from 
1878 till 1 90 1 was ably seconded by Miss Ellen Terry, 
revived at the Lyceum Theatre between 1874 and 
1902 twelve plays ('Hamlet,' 'Macbeth,' * Othello,' 
'Richard HI,' ' The Merchant of Venice," Much Ado 
about Nothing,' ' Twelfth Night,' ' Romeo and Juliet,' 
* King Lear,' ' Henry VHI,' ' Cymbeline,' and ' Corio- 
lanus '), and gave each of them all the advantage they 
could derive from thoughtful acting as well as from 
lavish scenic elaboration.^ But theatrical revivals of 
plays of Shakespeare are in England intermittent, and 
no theatrical manager since Phelps's retirement has 
sought systematically to illustrate on the stage the 
full range of Shakespearean drama. Far more in 
this direction has been attempted in Germany.^ 
In one respect the history of recent Shakespearean 
representations can be viewed by the literary student 
. with unqualified satisfaction. Although some changes 
of text or some rearrangement of the scenes are found 
imperative in all theatrical representations of Shake- 
speare, a growing public sentiment in England and 
elsewhere has for many years favoured as loyal an ad- 

1 Hainlet in 1874-5 and Macbeth in 1888-9 were each performed by 
Sir Henry Irving for 200 nights in uninterrupted succession; these are 
the longest continuous runs that any of Shakespeare's plays are known 
to have enjoyed. 2 ggg p^ 263. 



POSTHUMOUS REPUTATION 357 

herence to the authorised version of the plays as is 
practicable on the part of theatrical managers ; and 
the evil traditions of the eighteenth-century stage 
are well-nigh extinct. 

Music and art in England owe much to Shake- 
speare's influence. From Thomas Morley, Purcell, 
In music Matthew Locke, and Arne to William 
and art. Linley, Sir Henry Bishop, and Sir Arthur 
Sullivan, every distinguished musician has sought to 
improve on his predecessor's setting of one or more 
of Shakespeare's songs, or has composed concerted 
music in illustration of some of his dramatic themes.^ 
In art, the publisher John Boydell organised in 1787 
a scheme for illustrating scenes in Shakespeare's work 
by the greatest living English artists. Some fine 
pictures were the result. A hundred and sixty-eight 
were painted in all, and the artists, whom Boydell em- 
ployed, included Sir Joshua Reynolds, George Rom- 
ney, Thomas Stothard, John Opie, Benjamin West, 
James Barry, and Henry Fuseli. All the pictures 
were exhibited from time to time between 1789 and 
1804 at a gallery specially built for the purpose in 
Pall Mall, and in 1802 Boydell published a collection of 
engravings of the chief pictures. The great series of 
paintings was dispersed by auction in 1805. Few emi- 
nent artists of later date, from Daniel Maclise to Sir 
John Miilais, have lacked the ambition to interpret 
some scene or character of Shakespearean drama. 

In America no less enthusiasm for Shakespeare 

^Cf. Alfred Roffe, Shakspe^'e Music, 1878; Songs in Shakspere 
. . . set to Music, 1884, New Shakspere Soc; E. W. Naylor, Shake- 
speare and Music, 1896; and L. C. Elson, Shakespeare in Music, 1901. 



358 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

has been manifested than in England. Editors and 
critics are hardly less numerous there, and some criti- 
cism from American pens, like that of Tames 

In America. ht ni I'l 

Russell Lowell, has reached the highest 
literary level. Nowhere, perhaps, has more labour 
been devoted to the study of his works than that 
given by Mr. H. H. Furness of Philadelphia to the 
preparation of his ' New Variorum ' edition. The 
Barton collection of Shakespeareana in the Boston 
Public Library is one of the most valuable extant, 
and the elaborate catalogue (1878-80) contains some 
2,500 entries. First of Shakespeare's plays to be 
represented in America, ' Richard III ' was performed 
in New York in March 1750. More recently Junius 
Brutus Booth (1796- 185 2), Edwin Forrest (1806- 
1892), John Edward McCullough, Forrest's disciple 
( 1 837-1 885), Edwin Booth, Junius Brutus Booth's 
son (1833-1893), Charlotte Cushman (1816-1876), 
Ada Rehan {b. 1859), and Julia Marlowe have main- 
tained on the American stage the great traditions of 
Shakespearean acting ; while Mr. E. A. Abbey has 
devoted high artistic gifts to pictorial representation 
of scenes from the plays. 

The Bible, alone of literary compositions, has been 
translated more frequently or into a greater number 
Trans- of languages than the works of Shakespeare, 
lations. -Y\]_Q progress of his reputation in Germany, 
France, Italy, and Russia was somewhat slow at the 
outset. But in Germany the poet has received for nearly 
In a century and a half a recognition scarcely 

Germany, j^gg pronounccd than that accorded him in 
America and in his own country. Three of Shake- 



POSTHUMOUS REPUTATION 359 

speare's plays, now in the Zurich Library, were brought 
thither by J. R. Hess from England in 16 14. As early 
as 1626 ' Hamlet,' ' King Lear,' and ' Romeo and Juliet ' 
were acted at Dresden, and a version of the ' Taming 
of The Shrew ' was played there and elsewhere at the 
end of the seventeenth century. But such mention 
of Shakespeare as is found in German literature 
between 1640 and 1740 only indicates a knowledge 
on the part of German readers either of Dryden's 
criticisms or of the accounts of him printed in English 
encyclopaedias.^ The earliest sign of a direct acquaint- 
ance with the plays is a poor translation of * Julius 
Caesar ' into German by Baron C. W. von Borck, 
formerly Prussian minister in London, which was pub- 
lished at Berlin in 1 74 1 . A worse rendering of ' Romeo 
and Juliet ' followed in 1758. Meanwhile J. C. Gott- 
sched (1700-66), an influential man of letters, warmly 
denounced Shakespeare in a review of von Borck's 
effort in * Beitrage zur deutschen Sprache' and else- 
where. Lessing came without delay to Shakespeare's 
rescue, and set his reputation, in the estimation of the 
German public, on that exalted pedestal which it has 
not ceased to occupy. It was in 1759, in a journal 
entitled ' Litteraturbriefe,' that Lessing first claimed 
for Shakespeare superiority, not only to the French 
dramatists Racine and Corneille, who hitherto had 
dominated European taste, but to all ancient or 
modern poets. Lessing's doctrine, which he developed 
in his ' Hamburgische Dramaturgic ' (Hamburg, 1767, 
2 vols, 8vo), was at once accepted by the poet 

1 Cf. D. G. Morhoff, Unterricht von der teutschen Sprache und Poesie^ 
Kiel, 1682, p. 250. 



360 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

Johann Gottfried Herder in the ' Blatter von deutschen 
Art und Kunst,' i//!. Christopher Martin Wieland 
(1733-18 1 3) in 1762 began a prose translation which 
Johann Joachim Eschenburg (i 743-1 820) completed 
(Zurich, 13 vols., 1775-84). Between 1797 and 1833 
there appeared at intervals the classical German ren- 
dering by August Wilhelm von Schlegel and Ludwig 
Tieck, leaders of the romantic school of 

German 

trans- German literature, whose creed embodied, as 

lations. ^ . - . , 

one 01 its first articles, an unwavering venera- 
tion for Shakespeare. Schlegel translated only seven- 
teen plays, and his workmanship excels that of the 
rest of the translation. Tieck's part in the undertaking 
was mainly confined to editing translations by various 
hands. Many other German translations in verse were 
undertaken during the same period — by J. H. Voss 
and his sons (Leipzig, 1818-29), by J. W. O. Benda 
(Leipzig, 1825-6), by J. Korner (Vienna, 1836), by 
A. Bottger (Leipzig, 1836-7), by E. Ortlepp (Stuttgart, 
1838-9), and by A. Keller and M. Rapp (Stuttgart, 
1 843-6). The best of more recent German translations 
is that by a band of poets and eminent men of letters 
including Friedrich von Bodenstedt, Ferdinand von 
Freiligrath, and Paul Heyse (Leipzig, 1867-71, 38 
vols.). Most of these versions have been many times 
reissued, but, despite the high merits of von Bodenstedt 
and his companions' performance, Schlegel and Tieck's 
achievement still holds the field. Schlegel's lectures on 
'Shakespeare and the Drama,' which were delivered 
at Vienna in 1808, and were translated into English 
in 18 1 5, are worthy of comparison with those of Cole- 



POSTHUMOUS REPUTATION 36 1 

ridge, who owed much to their influence. Wordsworth 
in 18 1 5 declared that Schlegel and his disciples first 
marked out the right road in aesthetic criticism, and 
enjoyed at the moment superiority over all English 
aesthetic critics of Shakespeare.^ Subsequently Goethe 
poured forth, in his voluminous writings, a mass of • 
criticism even more illuminating and appreciative than 
Schlegel's.^ Although Goethe deemed Shakespeare's 
works unsuited to the stage, he adapted ' Romeo and 
Juliet' for the Weimar Theatre, while Schiller pre- 
pared 'Macbeth ' (Stuttgart, 1801). Heine published 
in 1838 charming studies of Shakespeare's heroines 
(English translation 1895), and acknowledged only one 
defect in Shakespeare — that he was an Englishman. 

1 In his ' Essay Supplementary to the Preface ' in the edition of his 
Poems of 1815 Wordsworth wrote : 'The Germans, only of foreign 
nations, are approaching towards a knowledge of what he \i.e. Shake- 
speare] is. In some respects they have acquired a superiority over the 
fellow-countrymen of the poet ; for among us, it is a common — I might 
say an established — opinion that Shakespeare is justly praised when he is 
pronounced to be " a wild irregular genius in whom great faults are com- 
pensated by great beauties." How long may it be before this misconcep- 
tion passes away and it becomes universally acknowledged that the judg- 
ment of Shakespeare ... is not less admirable than his imagination? . . .' 

2 Throughout his long life Goethe was the most enthusiastic of Shake- 
speare's worshippers. In 1771, at the age of twenty-two, he composed 
an oration which he delivered to fellow-students at Strasburg by way 
of justifying his first passionate adoration (see Lewes, Life of Goethe, 
1890, pp. 92-5). A detailed analysis of the character of Hamlet 
occupies much space in Goethe's Wilhelm Meister, and many eulo- 
gistic references to Shakespeare figure in Goethe's Wahrheit und 
Dichtung, and in Eckermann's Reports of Goethe's Conversation. A 
remarkable essay on Shakespeare's pre-eminence was written by Goethe 
late in life under the title Shakespeare und kein Ende. This appears 
in the chief editions of Goethe's collected prose works in the section 
headed 'Theater und dramatische Dichtung.' 



362 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

During the last half-century textual, aesthetic, and 
biographical criticism has been pursued in Germany 
with unflagging industry and energy ; and although 
laboured and supersubtle theorising characterises 
much German aesthetic criticism, its mass and variety 
Modern testify to the impressivene.ss of the appeal 
German that Shakcspcare's work has made to the 

writers on . 

Shake- German intellect. The efforts to stem the 
current of Shakespearean worship made by 
the realistic critic, Gustav Riimelin, in his ' Shake- 
spearestudien ' (Stuttgart, 1866), and subsequently 
by the dramatist, J. R. Benedix, in ' Die Shakespearo- 
manie' (Stuttgart, 1873, 8vo), proved of no effect. 
In studies of the text and metre Nikolaus Delius 
(18 1 3-1888) should, among recent German writers, 
be accorded the first place ; and in studies of the 
biography and stage history Friedrich Karl Elze 
( 1 821-1889). Of recent aesthetic critics in Germany, 
those best deserving recognition probably are Fried- 
rich Alexander Theodor Kreyssig (18 18-1879), 3-^- 
thor of ' Vorlesungen liber Shakespeare ' (Berlin, 
1858 and 1874), and ' Shakespeare-Fragen ' (Leipzig, 
1871); Otto Ludwig the poet (1813-1865), author of 
* Shakespeare-Studien,' ^ and Eduard Wilhelm Sievers 
(1820-1895), author of many valuable essays as well 
as of an uncompleted biography. ^ Ulrici's ' Shake- 

1 See Nachlass-Schriften, Otto Ludivig's, edited by Moritz Hey- 
drich, Leipzig, 1874, Bd. ii. 

2 Cf. Sievers's William Shakespeare : Sein Leben und Dickie n (Gotha, 
1866), vol. i (all published), and his Shakespeare'' s Ziveite Mittelalter- 
lichen Dranien-Cyclus (treating mainly of Richard II, Henry IV, and 
Henry V), edited with a notice of Sievers's Shakespearean work by 
Dr. W. Wetz, Berlin, 1896. 



POSTHUMOUS REPUTATION 363 

speare's Dramatic Art ' (first published at Halle in 
1839) and Gervinus's Commentaries (first published 
at Leipzig in 1848-9), both of which are famihar in 
English translations, are suggestive but unconvincing 
aesthetic interpretations. The German Shakespeare 
Society, founded at Weimar in 1865, has published 
forty-four year-books (edited successively by von 
Bodenstedt, Delius, Elze, F. A. Leo, and Prof. Brandl, 
with Wolfgang Keller and Max Forster) ; each con- 
tains useful contributions to Shakespearean study. 

Shakespeare has been no less effectually national- 
ised on the German stage. The four great actors — 
OntheGer- Frederick Ulrich Ludwig Schroeder (1744- 
man stage, igjg^ of Hamburg, Ludwig Devrient (1784- 
1832), his nephew Gustav Emil Devrient (1803- 
1872), and Ludwig Barnay {b. 1842) — largely de- 
rived their fame from their successful assumptions 
of Shakespearean characters. Another of Ludwig 
Devrient's nephews, Eduard (1801-1 877), also an 
actor, prepared, with his son Otto, an acting Ger- 
man edition (Leipzig, 1873 and following years). 
An acting edition by Wilhelm Oechelhaeuser 
appeared previously at Berlin in 1871. Twenty- 
eight of the thirty-seven plays assigned to Shake- 
speare are now on recognised lists of German 
acting plays, including all the histories.^ In the year 
1903 no fewer than 977 performances were given of 
twenty-five plays. In 1905 performances of twenty- 
three plays reached a total of 1,258 — an average of 

1 Cf. Jahrbucher der Deutschen Shakespeare- Gesellsckafiy 1894- 
1907. 



364 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

nearly four Shakespearean representations a day in 
the German-speaking districts of Europe.^ It is not 
only in capitals like Berlin and Vienna that the 
representations are frequent and popular. In towns 
like Altona, Breslau, Frankfort-on-the-Maine, Ham- 
burg, Magdeburg, and Rostock, Shakespeare is acted 
constantly and the greater number of his dramas is 
regularly kept in rehearsal. * Othello,' * Hamlet,' 

* Romeo and Juliet,' and ' The Taming of The Shrew ' 
usually prove most attractive. Of the many, German 
musical composers who have worked on Shake- 
spearean themes, Mendelssohn (in ' Midsummer Night's 
Dream'), Schumann, and Franz Schubert (in setting 
separate songs) have achieved the greatest success. 

In France Shakespeare won recognition after a 

longer struggle than in Germany. Cyrano de Ber- 

gerac (161 9-1 65 5), in his tragedy of 

In France. , . . . , , . 

Agnppme, seemed to echo passages m 
' Cymbeline,' 'Hamlet,' and /The Merchant of 

1 The exact statistics for 1898 and 1903 were: * Othello,' acted 107 
and 125 times for the respective years; ' Hamlet,' 106 and 96; ' Romeo 
and Juliet,' 11 1 and 99; 'Taming of The Shrew,' 130 and 127; 'The 
Merchant of Venice,' 71 and ill; 'A Midsummer Night's Dream,' 
69 and 88; 'A Winter's Tale,' 61 and 31 ; 'Much Ado about No- 
thing,' 32 and 39; 'Lear,' 30 and 25; ' As You Like It,' i and 52; 

* Comedy of Errors,' 32 and 15; 'Twelfth Night,' 31 and o; 'Julius 
Cesar,' 41 and 29; 'Macbeth,' 15 and 13; 'Merry Wives,' 6 and o; 
'The Tempest,' i and 3; 'Antony and Cleopatra,' 5 and o; ' Corio- 
lanus,' 12 and 8; ' Troilus and Cressida,' i and o; 'Richard II,' 
3 and 13; * Henry IV,' Part I, 23 and 23; Part II, i and 8; ' Henry V,' 
8 and 19; * Henry VI,' Part I, 2 and 10; Part II, 2 and 6; ' Rich- 
ard III,' 14 and 21; ' King John,' o and 8; ' Henry VIII,' o and 3; 

* Measure for Measure,' o and 5 (^Jahrhucher der Deutschen Shake- 
speare Gesellschaft for 1899, pp. 381 seq., and for 1904, pp. 375 seq.). 



POSTHUMOUS REPUTATION 365 

Venice,* but the resemblances prove to be accidental. 
It was Nicolas Clement, Louis XIV's librarian, who, 
first of Frenchmen, put on record an appreciation of 
Shakespeare. When, about 1680, he entered in the 
catalogue of the royal library the title of tl;e Second 
Folio of 1632, he added a note in which he allowed 
Shakespeare imagination, natural thoughts, and 
ingenious expression, but deplored his obscenity.^ 
Half a century elapsed before public attention in 
France was again directed to Shakespeare. 2 The Abbd 
Prevost, in his periodical * Le Pour et Centre' (1733 
et seq.), acknowledged his power. The Abbe 
Leblanc, in his * Lettres d'un Francois' (1745), while 
crediting him with many grotesque extravagances, 
recognised ungrudgingly the sublimity of his style. 
But it is to Voltaire that his countrymen owe, as he him- 
self boasted, their first effective introduction to Shake- 
speare. Voltaire studied Shakespeare thoroughly on 
his visit to England between 1726 and 1729, and his 
influence is visible in his own dramas. In his ' Lettres 
Philosophiques'(i73i), afterwards reissued as 'Lettres 
sur les Anglais,' 1734 (Nos. xviii and xix), and in 
his * Lettre sur la Tragedie ' (1731), he expressed 
admiration for Shakespeare's genius, but attacked his 
Voltaire's Want of tastc and art. He described him as 
strictures, j j^ Corncille de Londres, grand f ou d'ailleurs, 
mais il a des morceaux- admirables.' Writing to the 
Abbe des Fontaines in November 1735, Voltaire 

I'Jusserand, A Fre7ich Ambassador, p. 56. 

2 Cf. Al. Schmidt, Voltaire's Verdienst von der Einfuhrung Shake- 
speare's in Frankreich, Konigsberg, 1864. 



366 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

admitted many merits in 'Julius Caesar/ on which he 
published ' Observations' in 1764. Johnson replied to 
Voltaire's general criticism in the preface to his edition 
(1765), and Mrs. Elizabeth Montagu in 1769 in a sepa- 
rate volume, which was translated into French in 
1777. Diderot made, in his * Encyclopedic/ the first 
stand in France against the Voltairean position, and 
increased opportunities of studying Shakespeare's 
works increased the poet's vogue. Twelve plays 
were translated in De la Place's * Theatre Anglais ' 
(1745-8). Jean-F'ran9ois Ducis (1733-1816) adapted 
without much insight six plays for the French stage, 
beginning in 1769 with * Hamlet,' his version of which 
was acted with applause. In 1776 Pierre Le Tourneur 
began a bad prose translation (completed in 1782) of all 
Shakespeare's plays, and declared him to be ' the god 
of the theatre.' Voltaire protested against this esti- 
mate in a new remonstrance consisting of two letters, 
of which the first was read before the French Aca- 
demy on August 25, 1776. Here Shakespeare was 
described as a barbarian, whose works — ■ ' a huge 
dunghill ' — concealed some pearls. 

Although Voltaire's censure was rejected by the 
majority of later French critics, it expressed a senti- 
ment born of the genius of the nation, and made 
French ^^ imprcssion that was only gradually ef- 
critics' faced. Marmontel, La Harpe, Marie-Joseph 

gradual . . . 

emancipa- Chenicr, and Chateaubriand, in his * Essai 

tion from r-ii y n, • i- i vrl,'* 

Voltairean sur Shakcspcare, 1 80 1, mclmed to Voltaire s 
influence. ^.^^ . ^^^ Madame de Stael wrote effec- 
tively on the other side in her * De la Litterature,' 



POSTHUMOUS REPUTATION 367 

1804 (i. caps. 13, 14, ii. 5). *At this day,' wrote 
Wordsworth in 181 5, * the French critics have abated 
nothing of their aversion to " this darling of our nation." 
" The English with their bouffonde Shakespeare " is as 
familiar an expression among them as in the time of 
Voltaire. Baron Grimm is the only French writer 
who seems to have perceived his infinite superiority 
to the first names of the French theatre ; an advan- 
tage which the Parisian critic owed to his German 
blood and German education.' ^ The revision of Le 
Tourneur's translation by Frangois Guizot and A. 
Pichot in 1821 gave Shakespeare a fresh advantage. 
Paul Duport, in ' Essais Litteraires sur Shakespeare ' 
(Paris, 1828, 2 vols.), was the last French critic of 
repute to repeat Voltaire's censure unreservedly. 
Guizot, in his discourse * Sur la Vie et les QEuvres de 
Shakespeare ' (reprinted separately from the translation 
of 1 821), as well as in his ' Shakespeare et son Temps ' 
(1852) ; Villemain in a general essay,^. and Barante in 
a study of ' Hamlet,' ^ acknowledge the mightiness of 
Shakespeare's genius with comparatively few qualifi- 
cations. Other complete translations followed — by 
Francisque Michel (1839), by Benjamin Laroche 
(1851), and by Emil Montegut (1867), but the best 

1 Frederic Melchior, Baron Grimm (1723-1807), for some years a 
friend of Rousseau and the correspondent of Diderot and the encydo- 
pedisies, scattered many appreciative references to Shakespeare in his 
voluminous Correspondance Litteraire Philosophique et Critique, extend- 
ing o\&x the period 1 753-1 770, the greater part of which was published 
in 16 vols. 1812-13. 

2 Melanges Historiques, 1827, iii. 141-87. 

3 Ibid. 1824, iii. 217-34. 



368 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

is that in prose by Frangois Victor Hugo (1859-66), 
whose father, Victor Hugo the poet, pubHshed a 
rhapsodical eulogy in 1864. Alfred Mezieres's ' Shake- 
speare, ses CEuvres et ses Critiques' (Paris, i860), 
is a saner appreciation. 

Meanwhile 'Hamlet' and 'Macbeth,' 'Othello, 
and a few other Shakespearean plays, became stock 
On the pieces on the French stage. A powerful 
French impctus to theatrical representation of Shake- 

stas^e. 

speare in France was given by the perform- 
ance in Paris of the chief plays by a strong company 
of English actors in the autumn of 1827. 'Hamlet* 
and ' Othello ' were acted successively by Charles 
Kemble and Macready ; Edmund Kean appeared 
as Richard HI, Othello, and Shylock; Miss Smith- 
son, who became the wife of Hector Berlioz the musi- 
cian, filled the roles of Ophelia, Juliet, Desdemona, 
Cordelia, and Portia. French critics were divided as 
to the merits of the performers, but most of them 
were enthusiastic in their commendations of the plays. ^ 
Alfred de Vigny prepared a version of ' Othello ' for 
the Theatre-Frangais in 1829 with eminent success. 
An adaptation of 'Hamlet' by Alexandre Dumas 
was first performed in 1847, and a rendering by the 
Chevalier de Chatelain (1864) was often repeated. 
George Sand translated ' As You Like It ' (Paris, 
1856) for representation by the Comedie Frangaise 
on April 12, 1856. ' Lady Macbeth' has been repre- 

^ Very interesting comments on these performances appeared day 
by day in the Paris newspaper Le Globe. They were by Charles Magnin, 
who reprinted them in his Causeries et Meditations Historiques et 
Litter aires (Paris, 1843, i^- ^2 et seq.). 



POSTHUMOUS REPUTATION 369 

sented in recent years by Madame Sarah Bernhardt, 
and 'Hamlet' by M. Mounet Sully of the Theatre- 
Fran^ais.i Four French musicians — Berlioz in his 
symphony of ' Romeo and Juliet,' Gounod in his 
opera of ' Romeo and Juliet,' Ambroise Thomas 
in his opera of ' Hamlet,' and Saint-Saens in his 
opera of * Henry VHI ' — have interpreted musically 
portions of Shakespeare's work/ 

In Italy Shakespeare was little known before the 
nineteenth century. Such references as eighteenth- 
century Italian writers made to him were 
based on remarks by Voltaire.2 The French 
adaptation of 'Hamlet' by Ducis was issued in 
Italian blank verse (Venice, 1774, 8vo). Complete 
translations of all the plays made direct from 
the English were issued in verse by Michele Leoni 
at Verona in 1819-22, and by Giulio Carcano at 
Milan (1875-82, 12 vols.), and in prose by Carlo 
Rusconi at Padua in 1831 (new edit. Turin, 1858-9). 
' Othello ' and ' Romeo and Juliet ' have been very 
often translated into Italian separately. The Italian 
actors, Madame Ristori (as Lady Macbeth), Salvini 
(as Othello), and Rossi rank among Shakespeare's 
most effective interpreters. Rossini's opera on 
Othello and Verdi's operas on Macbeth, Othello, 

1 M. Jusserand, Shakespeare en France sous VAncien RegiiTie^ 
Paris, 1898 (English translation entitled Shakespeare i?t France, 
London, 1899), is the chief authority on its subject. Cf. Lacroix, 
Histoire ds f Influence de Shakespeare stir le Thedtre-Frait<;ais, 1 867 ; 
Edinburgh Review, 1849, pp. 39-77; Elze, Essays, pp. 193 seq. 

2 Cf. Giovanni Andres, DelP Origine, Progressi e Stato attuale 
d'' ogni Letteratura, 1782. 

2B 



370 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

and Falstaff (the last two with libretti by Boito), 
manifest close and appreciative study of Shake- 
speare. 

Two complete translations have been published in 
Dutch ; one in prose by A. S. Kok ( Amster- 

In Holland. ' n i 

dam, 1 873-1 880), the other m verse by 
Dr. L. A. J. Burgersdijk (Leyden, 1884-8, 12 vols.). 
In Eastern Europe, Shakespeare lirst became 
known through French and German translations. 
Into Russian * Romeo and Juliet ' was transited in 
1772, 'Richard III' in 1783, and 'Julius Caesar' in 

1786. Sumarakow translated Ducis' version 

In Russia. r tt i > • 

of 'Hamlet m 1784 for stage purposes, 
while the Empress Catherine II adapted the 'Merry 
Wives' and ' King John.' Numerous versions of all 
the chief plays followed; and in 1865 there appeared 
at St. Petersburg the best translation in verse (direct 
from the English), by Nekrasow and Gerbel. A prose 
translation, by N. Ketzcher, begun in 1862, was com- 
pleted in 1879, Gerbel issued a Russian translation 
of the 'Sonnets' in 1880. A new verse translation 
into Russian by various hands, edited by Professor 
Wengeroff of St. Petersburg, with critical essays, notes, 
and a vast number of illustrations, was published in St. 
Petersburg in 1902-4 (5 vols. 4to). Almost every play 
has been represented in Russian on the Russian stage. 
A Polish version of 'Hamlet' was acted at Lem- 
berg in 1797; and as many as sixteen plays now 

hold a recosrnised place amono: Polish actin2f 

In Poland. , ^, ^ -, , -r. , . , , • r 

plays. The standard Polish translation of 
Shakespeare's collected works appeared at Warsaw 
in 1875 (edited by the Polish poet Kraszewski), and 



POSTHUMOUS REPUTATION 3/1 

is reckoned among the most successful renderings in 
a foreign tongue. 

In Hungary, Shakespeare's greatest works have 
since the beginning of the nineteenth century been 
In highly appreciated by students and by play- 

Hungary, goers. * Romeo and Juliet ' was translated 
into Hungarian in 1786 and * Hamlet 'in 1790. In 
1830, 1845, and 1848, efforts were made to issue com- 
plete translations, but only portions were published. 
The first complete translation into Hungarian ap- 
peared at Budapest (1864-8). At the National 
Theatre at Budapest twenty-two plays have been of 
late included in the repertory. 1 

Other complete translations have been published 
in Bohemian (Prague, 1874), in Swedish (Lund, 1847- 
in other 1851), in Danish (1845-1850), and Finnish 
countries. (Helsingfors, 1892-5). In Spanish a com- 
plete translation is in course of publication (Madrid, 
1885 et seq.), and the eminent Spanish critic Menendez 
y Pejayo has set Shakespeare above Calderon. In 
Armenian, three plays (' Hamlet,' ' Romeo and 
Juliet,' and * As You Like It ') have been issued. 
Separate plays have appeared in Welsh, Portuguese, 
Friesic, Flemish, Servian, Roumanian, Maltese, 
Ukrainian, Wallachian, Croatian, modern Greek, 
Latin, Hebrew, and Japanese ; while a few have 
been rendered into Bengali, Hindustani, Marathi, 
Gujarati, Urdu, Kanarese, and other languages of 
India, and have been acted in native theatres. 

1 See August Greguss's Shakspere . . . els'o k'otet : Shakspere 
pdlydja, Budapest, 1880 (an account ol Shakespeare in Hungarian). 



3/2 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 



XXI 

GENERAL ESTIMATE 

No estimate of Shakespeare's genius can be 
adequate. In knowledge of human character, in 
General Wealth of humour, in depth of passion, in 
estimate. fertility of fancy, and in soundness of judg- 
ment, he has no rival. It is true of him, as of no 
other writer, that his language and versification adapt 
themselves to every phase of sentiment, and sound 
every note in the scale of felicity. Some defects 
are to be acknowledged, but they sink into insignifi- 
cance when measured by the magnitude of his 
achievement. Sudden transitions, elliptical expres- 
sions, mixed metaphors, indefensible verbal quibbles, 
and fantastic conceits at times create an atmosphere 
of obscurity. The student is perplexed, too, by obso- 
lete words and by some hopelessly corrupt readings. 
But when the whole of Shakespeare's vast work is 
scrutinised with due attention, the glow of his imagina- 
tion is seen to leave few passages wholly unillumined. 
Some of his plots are hastily constructed and incon- 
sistently developed, but the intensity of the interest 
with which he contrives to invest the personahty of 
his heroes and heroines triumphs over halting or 



GENERAL ESTIMATE 373 

digressive treatment of the story in which they have 
their being. Although he was versed in the techni- 
calities of stagecraft, he occasionally disregarded its 
elementary conditions. But the success of his pre- 
sentments of human life and character depended 
little on his manipulation of theatrical machinery. 
His unassailable supremacy springs from the versa- 
tile working of his insight and intellect, by virtue of 
which his pen limned with unerring precision almost 
every gradation of thought and emotion that ani- 
mates the living stage of the world. 

Shakespeare's mind, as Hazlitt suggested, con- 
tained within itself the germs of all faculty and feeling. 
He knew intuitively how every faculty and feeling 
would develop in any conceivable change of fortune. 
Men and women — good or bad, old or young, wise 
or foolish, merry or sad, rich or poor — yielded their 
secrets to him, and his genius enabled him to give 
being in his pages to all the shapes of humanity that 
present themselves on the highway of life. Each 
of his characters gives voice to thought or passion 
with an individuality and a naturalness that rouse 
Character ^^ ^^^ intelligent playgoer and reader the 
of Shake- illusion that they are overhearing men and 

speare's ■' ,. . , 

achieve- womcn Speak unpremeditatmgly among 
themselves, rather than that they are read- 
ing written speeches or hearing written speeches 
recited. The more closely the words are studied, 
the completer the illusion grows. Creatures of the 
imagination — fairies, ghosts, witches — are delineated 
with a like potency, and the reader or spectator 



3 74 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

feels instinctively that these supernatural entities 
could not speak, feel, or act otherwise than Shake- 
speare represents them. The creative power of 
poetry was never manifested to such effect as in the 
corporeal semblances in which Shakespeare clad the 
spirits of the air. 

So mighty a faculty sets at naught the common 
limitations of nationality, and in every quarter of the 
Its globe to which civilised life has penetrated 

recogrd-^ Shakcspearc's power is recognised. All the 
tion. world over, language is applied to his crea- 

tions that ordinarily applies to beings of flesh and 
blood. Hamlet and Othello, Lear and Macbeth, 
Falstaff and Shylock, Brutus and Romeo, Ariel and 
Caliban are studied in almost every civilised tongue 
as if they were historic personalities, and the chief 
of the impressive phrases that fall from their lips 
are rooted in the speech of civilised humanity. To 
Shakespeare the intellect of the world, speaking 
in divers accents, applies with one accord his own 
words : * How noble in reason ! how infinite in faculty ! 
in apprehension how like a god ! ' 



APPENDIX 



APPENDIX 



THE SOURCES OF BIOGRAPHICAL KNOWLEDGE 

The scantiness of contemporary records of Shakespeare's career 
has been much exaggerated. An investigation extending over 
p two centuries has brought together a mass of detail 

rary records which far cxcecds that accessible in the case of any 
other contemporary professional writer. Nevertheless, 
some important links are missing, and at some critical points 
appeal to conjecture is inevitable. But the fully ascertained 
facts are numerous enough to define sharply the general direc- 
tion that Shakespeare's career followed. Although the clues 
are in some places faint, the trail never altogether eludes the 
patient investigator. 

Fuller, in his 'Worthies' (1662), attempted the first bio- 
graphical notice of Shakespeare, with poor results. Aubrey, 
„. in his gossiping 'Lives of Eminent Men,' ^ based his 

efforts in ampler information on reports communicated to him 
biography. ^^ William Beeston {d. 1682), an aged actor, whom 
Dryden called 'the chronicle of the stage,' and who was doubt- 
less in the main a trustworthy witness. A few additional details 
were recorded in the seventeenth century by the Rev. John 
Ward (1629-1681), vicar of Stratford-on-Avon from 1662 to 
1668, in a diary and memorandum-book written between 1661 
and 1663 (ed. C. A. Severn, 1839); by the Rev. William 

' Compiled between 1669 and 1696; first printed in Letters from the Bodleian 
Library, 1813, and admirably re-edited for the Clarendon Press in 1898 by the Rev. 
Andrew Clark C2 vols.). 

377 



3/8 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

Fulman, whose manuscripts are at Corpus Christi College, 
Oxford (with valuable interpolations made before 1708 by the 
Rev. Richard Davies, vicar of Saperton, Gloucestershire); by 
John Dowdall, who recorded his experiences of travel through 
Warwickshire in 1693 (London, 1838); and by William Hall, 
who described a visit t^ Stratford in 1694 (London, 1884, from 
Hall's letter among the Bodleian MSS.)- Phillips in his 
'Theatrum Poetarum' (1675), and Langbaine in his 'English 
Dramatick Poets' (1691), confined themselves to elementary 
criticism. In 1709 Nicholas Rowe prefixed to his edition of the 
plays a more ambitious memoir than had yet been attempted, 
and embodied some hitherto unrecorded Stratford and London 
traditions with which the actor Thomas Betterton supplied 
him. A little fresh gossip was collected by William Oldys, 
and was printed from his manuscript 'Adversaria' (now in 
the British Museum) as an appendix to Yeo well's 'Memoir of 
Oldys,' 1862. Pope, Johnson, and Steevens, in the biographical 
prefaces to their editions, mainly repeated the narratives of 
their predecessor, Rowe. 

In the Prolegomena to the Variorum editions of 1803, 1813, 

and especially in that of 182 1, there was embodied a mass of 

fresh information derived by Edmund Malone from 

Biographers . , •' , , . , , 

of the nine- Systematic researches among the parochial records 
centoy ' ^^ Stratford, the manuscripts accumulated by the 
actor Alleyn at Dulwich, and official papers of state 
preserved in the public offices in London (now collected in the 
Public Record Office). The available knowledge of Elizabethan 
stage history, as well as of Shakespeare's biography, was thus 
greatly extended. John Payne Collier, in his 'History of 
English Dramatic Poetry' (1831), in his 'New Facts' about 
Shakespeare (1835), ^^^ 'New Particulars' (1836), and his 
'Further Particulars' (1839), ^^^ ^^ his editions of Henslowe's 
'Diary' and the 'Alleyn Papers' for the Shakespeare Society, 
while occasionally throwing some further light on obscure 
places, foisted on Shakespeare's biography a series of ingeniously 
forged documents which have greatly perplexed succeeding 
biographers.^ Joseph Hunter in 'New Illustrations of Shake- 
speare' (1845) ^^^ George Russell French's ' Shakespeareana 

I See pp. 383-4. 



SOURCES OF BIOGRAPHICAL KNOWLEDGE 379 

Genealogica' (1869) occasionally supplemented Malone's re- 
searches. James Orchard Halliwell (afterwards Halliwell- 
Phillipps) printed separately, between 1850 and 1884, in various 
privately issued publications, all the Stratford archives and 
extant legal documents bearing on Shakespeare's career, many 
of them for the first time. In 1881 Halliwell-Phillipps began the 
collective publication of materials for a full biography in his 
'Outlines of the Life of Shakespeare'; this work was generously 
enlarged in successive editions until it acquired massive propor- 
tions; in the seventh edition of 1887, which embodied the 
author's final corrections and additions, it reached near 1,000 
pages. (There have been three subsequent editions — the tenth 
and last being dated 1898 — which reprint the seventh edition 
without change.) Mr. Frederick Gard Fleay, in his ' Shake- 
speare Manual' (1876), in his 'Life of Shakespeare' (1886), in his 
'History of the Stage' (1890), and his 'Biographical Chronicle 
of the English Drama' (1891), adds much useful information 
respecting stage history and Shakespeare's relations with his 
fellow-dramatists, mainly derived from a study of the original 
editions of the plays of Shakespeare and of his contemporaries; 
but unfortunately many of Mr. Fleay's statements and conjec- 
tures are unauthenticated. For notices of Stratford, see Whe- 
ler's 'History and Antiquities' (1806), John R. Wise's 'Shake- 
Str tf d speare, his Birthplace and its Neighbourhood' (1861), 
topo- the present writer's ' Stratford-on-Avon to the Death 

grap y. ^£ Shakespeare' (new edit. 1907), J. W. Gray's 

'Shakespeare's Marriage' (1905), and Mrs. Stopes's 'Shake- 
speare's Warwickshire Contemporaries' (new edit. 1907). Wise 
appends a 'glossary of words still used in Warwickshire to 
be found in Shakspere.' The parish registers of Stratford have 
been edited by Mr. Richard Savage for the Parish Registers 
Society (1898-9). Nathan Drake's 'Shakespeare and his Times' 
(181 7) and G. W. Thornbury's 'Shakespeare's England ' (1856) col- 
lect much material respecting Shakespeare's social environment. 
The chief monographs on special points in Shakespeare's 
biography are Dr. Richard Farmer's 'Essay on the Learning 
of Shakespeare' (1767), reprinted in the Variorum editions; 
Octavius Gilchrist's 'Examination of the Charges ... of Ben 
Jonson's Enmity towards Shakespeare' (1808); W. J. Thoms's 



380 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

*Was Shakespeare ever a Soldier?' (1849), ^ study based on 
an erroneous identification of the poet with another William 
g ... J Shakespeare; Lord Campbell's 'Shakespeare's Legal 
studies in Acquirements considered' (1859) ; John Charles Buck- 
biography, ^.jpg ^Medical Knowledge of Shakespeare' (i860); 
C. F. Green's 'Shakespeare's Crab-Tree, with its Legend' (1862) ; 
C. H. Bracebridge's 'Shakespeare no Deer-stealer' (1862); Wil- 
liam Blades's 'Shakspere and Topography' (1872); D. H. Mad- 
den's 'Diary of Master William Silence (Shakespeare and Sport)/ 
new edit. 1907; and C. I. Elton's 'William Shakespeare: His 
Family and Friends' (1904). An epitome of the biographical 

information is supplied in Karl Elze's 'Life of Shake- 
?itoSes speare' (Halle, 1876; English translation, 1888), with 

which Elze's 'Essays' from the publications of the Ger- 
man Shakespeare Society (English translation, 1874) are worth 
studying. A slighter effort by Samuel Neil (1861) accepts 
Collier's forgeries. Professor Dowden's 'Shakespere Primer' 
(1877) and 'Introduction to Shakspere' (1893), and Dr. Furni- 
vall's 'Introduction to the Leopold Shakspere,' are useful. 

Francis Douce's 'Illustrations of Shakespeare' (1807, new 
edit. 1839), 'Shakespeare's Library' (.ed. J. P. Collier and W. C. 

Hazlitt, 1875), 'Shakespeare's Plutarch' (ed. Skeat. 
study of 1875), ^^^ 'Shakespeare's HoHnshed ' (ed. W. G. 

plots and Boswell-Stone, 1896) are, with H. R. D. Anders's 

'Shakespeare's Books' (Berlin, 1904), of service in 
tracing the sources of Shakespeare's plots. Alexander Schmidt's 
'Shakespeare Lexicon' (1874), Dr. E. A. Abbott's 'Shake- 
spearian Grammar' (1869, new edit. 1893), and Prof. Franz's 
'Shakespeare-Grammatik,' 2 pts. (Halle, 1898-1900), with his 
'Die Grundziige der Sprache Shakespeares ' (Berlin, 1902) are 

valuable aids to a study of the text. Useful concor- 
dancTs"!" dances to the Plays have been prepared by Mrs. 

Cowden-Clarke (1845), to the Poems by Mrs. H. H. 
Furness (Philadelphia, 1875), and to Plays and Poems, in one 
volume, with references to numbered lines, by John Bartlett 
(London and New York, 1895).^ Extensive bibliographies are 

» The eariiest attempts at a concordance were A Complete Verbal Index to the 
Plays, by F. Twiss (1805), and An Index to the Remarkable Passages and Words. 
by Samuel Ayscough (1827), but these are now superseded. 



SHAKESPEAREAN FORGERIES 38 1 

given in Lowndes's 'Library Manual' (ed. Bohn); in Franz 
Thimm's ' Shakespeariana' (1864 and 1871); in the 'Encyclo- 
paedia Britannica,' 9th edit, (skilfully classified by 
fraiwes. ^^- H- R- Tedder); and in 'British Museum Cata- 
logue' (the Shakespearean entries — 3,680 titles — 
separately published in 1897). The Oxford University Press's 
facsimile reproductions of the First Folio (1902), and of Shake- 
speare's 'Poems' and 'Pericles' (1905), contain introductions by 
the present writer, with bibliographies of early issues. See also 
'Four Quarto Editions of Plays of Shakespeare. The Property 
of the Trustees of Shakespeare's Birthplace. Described by 
Sidney Lee. With five illustrations in facsimile' (Stratford- 
on-Avon. Printed for the Trustees, 1908). 

The valuable publications of the Shakespeare Society, the 
New Shakspere Society, and of the Deutsche Shakespeare- 
Gesellschaft, are noticed above (see pp. 349-50, 362). 
studies! To the critical studies by Coleridge, Hazlitt, Dowden, 

and Swinburne, on which comment has been made 
(see p. 349), there may be added the essays on Shakespeare's 
heroines respectively by Mrs. Jameson in 1833 and Lady Martin 
in 1885; Dr. Ward's 'English Dramatic Literature' (1875, ^^^ 
edit. 1898) ; Richard G. Moulton's ' Shakespeare as a Dramatic 
Artist' (1885); 'Shakespeare Studies' by Thomas Spencer 
Baynes (1893); F. S. Boas's 'Shakspere and his Predecessors' 
(1895); Georg Brandes's 'William Shakespeare' — a somewhat 
fanciful study (London, 1898, 2 vols. 8vo) ; Prof. Courthope's 
'History of English Poetry,' 1903, vol. iv; Prof. A. C. Bradley's 
'Shakespearean Tragedy' (London, 1904); the present writer's 
'Great Englishmen of the Sixteenth Century,' 1904, and his 
'Shakespeare and the Modern Stage,' 1906; Prof. Raleigh's 
'Shakespeare' in 'English Men of Letters' series, 1907. 

The intense interest which Shakespeare's life and work have 
long universally excited has tempted unprincipled or sportively 
„, , mischievous writers from time to time to deceive the 

Shake- 
spearean public by the forgery of documents purportmg to 

forgeries. supply new information. George Steevens made 

some foolish excursions in this direction. But the forgers were 

especially active between 1780 and 1850, and their frauds 

have caused students so much perplexity that it may be useful 



382 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

to warn them against those Shakespearean forgeries which have 
obtained the widest currency. 

The earliest forger to obtain notoriety was John Jordan 
( 1 746-1809), a resident at Stratford-on-Avon, whose most impor- 
tant achievement was the forgery of the will of 
J°'^6'-i8o^°' Shakespeare's father; but many other papers in 
Jordan's 'Original Collections on Shakespeare and 
Stratford-on-Avon' (1780), and 'Original Memoirs and Histori- 
cal Accounts of the Families of Shakespeare and Hart,' are 
open to the gravest suspicion.^ 

The best known Shakespearean forger of the eighteenth 
century was William Henry Ireland (1777-1835), a barrister's 
^, T , , clerk, who, with the aid of his father, SamueMreland 

The Ireland ' ' ' 

forgeries, (i74o?-i8oo), an author and engraver of some repute, 
^^^ ■ produced in 1796 a volume of forged papers claiming 

to relate to Shakespeare's career. The title ran: 'Miscellaneous 
Papers and Legal Instruments under the Hand and Seal of 
William Shakespeare, including the tragedy of "King Lear" and 
a small fragment of "Hamlet" from the original MSS. in the 
possession of Samuel Ireland.' On April 2, 1796, Sheridan and 
Kemble produced at Drury Lane Theatre a bombastic tragedy 
in blank verse entitled 'Vortigern' under the pretence that it 
was by Shakespeare, and had been recently found among the 
manuscripts of the dramatist that had fallen into the hands of the 
Irelands. The piece, which was published, was the invention of 
young Ireland. The fraud of the Irelands, which for some time 
deceived a section of the literary public, was finally exposed by 
Malone in his valuable 'Inquiry into the Authenticity of the 
Ireland MSS.' (1796). Young Ireland afterwards published his 
'Confessions' (1805). He had acquired much skill in copying 
Shakespeare's genuine signature from the facsimile in Steevens's 
edition of Shakespeare's works of the mortgage-deed of the 
Blackfriars house of 1612-13,^ and, besides conforming to that 
style of handwriting in his forged deeds and literary com- 
positions, he inserted copies of the signature on the title-pages 
of many sixteenth-century books, and often added notes in 
the same feigned hand on their margins. Numerous sixteenth- 

' Jordan's Collections, including this fraudulent will of Shakespeare's father, 
was printed privately by J. O. Halliwell-Phillipps in 1864. * See p. 276. 



SHAKESPEAREAN FORGERIES 383 

century volumes embellished by Ireland in this manner are 
extant, and his forged signatures and marginalia have been 
frequently mistaken for genuine autographs of Shakespeare. 

But Ireland's and Jordan's frauds are clumsy compared with 
those that belong to the nineteenth century. Most of the works 
Forgeries relating to the biography of Shakespeare or the 
promulgated historv of the Elizabethan stage produced by John 
by Collier ^ n u- A i.- •• u^ o 

and others, rayne Collier, or under his supervision, between 1835 

1835-1849. ^j^^ 1849 are honeycombed with forged references 
to Shakespeare, and many of the forgeries have been admitted 
unsuspectingly into literary history. The chief of these forged 
papers I arrange below in the order of the dates that have been 
allotted to them by their manufacturers.^ 

1589 (November). Appeal from the Blackfriars players 
(16 in number) to the Privy Council for favour. Shake- 
speare's name stands twelfth. From the manuscripts 
at Bridgewater House, belonging to the Earl of 
Ellesmere. First printed in Collier's 'New Facts 
regarding the Life of Shakespeare,' 1835. 
1596 (July). List of inhabitants of the Liberty of South wark, 
Shakespeare's name appearing in the sixth place. 
First printed in Collier's 'Life of Shakespeare,' 1858, 
p. 126. 
1596. Petition of the owners and players of the Blackfriars 
Theatre to the Privy Council in reply to an alleged 
petition of the inhabitants requesting the closing of the 
playhouse. Shakespeare's name is fifth on the list of 
petitioners. This forged paper is in the Public Record 

^ Reference has already been made to the character of the manuscript correc- 
tions made by Collier in a copy of the Second Folio of 1632, known as the Perkins 
Folio. See p. 327, note 2. The chief authorities on the subject of the Collier for- 
geries are: An Inquiry into the Genuineness of the Manuscript Corrections in Mr. 
J. Payne Collier's Annotated Shakspere Folio, 1632, and of certain Shaksperian Docu- 
ments likewise published by Mr. Collier, by N. E. S. A. Hamilton, London, i860; 
A Coinplete View of the Shakespeare Controversy concerning the Authenticity and 
Genuineness of Manuscript Matter affecting the Works and Biography of Shakspere, 
published by J. Payne Collier as the Fruits of his Researches, by C. M. Ingleby, LL.D. 
of Trinity College, Cambridge, London, 1861; Catalogue of the Manuscripts and Muni- 
ments of Alleyn's College of God's Gift at Dulwich,hy George F. Warner, M.A., 1881; 
Notes on the Life of John Payne Collier, with a Complete List of his Works and an 
A ccount of such Shakespeare Documents as are believed to be spurious, by Henry B. 
Wheatley, London, 1884. 



384 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

Office, and was first printed in Collier's 'History of 
English Dramatic Poetry' (183 1), vol. i. p. 297, and 
has been constantly reprinted as if it were genuine.^ 

1596 (circa). A letter signed H. S. (i.e. Henry, Earl of South- 
ampton), addressed to Sir Thomas Egerton, praying 
protection for the players of the Blackfriars Theatre, 
and mentioning Burbage and Shakespeare by name. 
First printed in Collier's 'New Facts.' 

1596 (circa). A list of sharers in the Blackfriars Theatre, 
with the valuation of their property, in which Shake- 
speare is credited with four shares, worth 933/. 6s. 8d. 
This was first printed in Collier's 'New Facts,' 1835, 
p. 6, from the Egerton MSS. at Bridgewater -House. 

1602 (August 6). Notice of the performance of 'Othello' by 
Burbage's 'players' before Queen Elizabeth when on 
a visit to Sir Thomas Egerton, the lord-keeper, at 
Harefield, in a forged account of disbursements by 
Egerton's steward, Arthur Mainwaringe, from the 
manuscripts at Bridgewater House, belonging to the 
Earl of Ellesmere. Printed in Collier's 'New Par- 
ticulars regarding the Works of Shakespeare,' 1836, 
and again in Collier's edition of the 'Egerton Papers,' 
1840 (Camden Society), pp. 342-3. 

1603 (October 3). Mention of 'Mr. Shakespeare of the 
Globe' in a letter at Dulwich from Mrs. Alleyn to her 
husband ; part of the letter is genuine. First published 
in Collier's 'Memoirs of Edward Alleyn,' 1841, p. 63.^ 

1604 (April 9), List of the names of eleven players of the 
King's Company fraudulently appended to a genuine 
letter at Dulwich College from the Privy Council 
bidding the Lord Mayor permit performances by the 
King's players. Printed in Collier's 'Memoirs of 
Edward Alleyn,' 1841, p. 68.^ 

1605 (November-December). Forged entries in Master of 
the Revels' account-books (now at the Public Record 
Office) of performances at Whitehall by the King's 

^ See Calendar of Stale Papers, Domestic, 1595-7, p. 310. 
* See Warner's Catalogue of Dulwich MSS. pp. 24-6. 
3 Cf. ibid. pp. 26-7. 



SHAKESPEAREAN FORGERIES 385 

players of the 'Moor of Venice' — i.e. 'Othello' — on 
November i, and of 'Measure for Measure' on December 
26, Printed in Peter Cunningham's 'Extracts from 
the Accounts of the Revels at Court' (pp. 203-4), pub- 
lished by the Shakespeare Society in 1842. Doubt- 
less based on Malone's trustworthy memoranda (now 
in the Bodleian Library) of researches among genuine 
papers formerly at the Audit Office at Somerset House. ^ 

1607. Notes of performances of 'Hamlet' and 'Richard II' 
by the crews of the vessels of the East India Com- 
pany's fleet off Sierra Leone. First printed in 'Narra- 
tives of Voyages towards the North- West, 1496-163 1,' 
edited by Thomas Rundall for the Hakluyt Society, 
1849, P- 231, from what purported to be an exact 
transcript 'in the India Office' of the 'Journal of 
William Keeling,' captain of one of the vessels in 
the expedition. Keeling's manuscript journal is still at 
the India Ofiice, but the leaves that should contain these 
entries are now, and have long been, missing from it. 

1609 (January 4). A warrant appointing Robert Daborne, 
William Shakespeare, and others instructors of the 
Children of the Revels. From the Bridgewater 
House MSS. first printed in ColHer's 'New Facts,' 1835. 

1609 (April 6). List of persons assessed for poor rate in 
Southwark, April 6, 1609, in which Shakespeare's name 
appears. First printed in Collier's 'Memoirs of Edward 
Alleyn,' 1841, p. 91. The forged paper is at Dulwich.^ 

161 1 (November). Forged entries in Master of the Revels' 
account-books (now at the Public Record Office) of 
performances at Whitehall by the King's Players of 
the 'Tempest' on November i, and of the 'Winter's 
Tale' on November 5. Printed in Peter Cunningham's 
'Extracts from the Revels Accounts,' p. 210. Doubt- 
less based on Malone's trustworthy memoranda of 
researches among genuine papers formerly at the 
Audit Office at Somerset House.^ 

' See p. 243, note 1. 

' Cf. Warner's Dulwich MSS. pp. 30-31, 
3 See p. 263, note i. 
2C 



386 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 



II 

THE BACON-SHAKESPEARE CONTROVERSY 

The apparent contrast between the homeliness of Shakespeare's 

Stratford career and the breadth of observation and knowledge 

displayed in his literary work has evoked the fantastic 

Its source 

theory that Shakespeare was not the author of the 
literature that passes under his name, and perverse attempts 
have been made to assign his works to his great contemporary, 
Francis Bacon (1561-1626), the great contemporary prose-writer, 
philosopher, and lawyer. It is argued that Shakespeare's plays 
embody a general omniscience (especially a knowledge of law) 
which was possessed by no contemporary except Bacon; that 
there are many close parallelisms between passages in Shake- 
speare's and passages in Bacon's works,^ and that Bacon makes 

Most of those that are commonly quoted are phrases in ordinary use by ail 
writers of the day. The only point of any interest raised in the argument from 
parallelisms of expression centres about a quotation from Aristotle which Bacon and 
Shakespeare not merely both make, but make in what looks at a first glance to be 
the same erroneous form. Aristotle wrote in his Nicomachean Ethics, i. 8, that 
young men were unfitted for the study of political philosophy. Bacon, in the Advance- 
ment of Learning (1605), wrote: 'Is not the opinion of Aristotle worthy to 
be regarded wherein he saith that young men are not fit auditors of moral philo- 
sophy?' (bk. ii. p. 255, ed. Kitchin). Shakespeare, about 1603, in Troilus and 
Cressida, 11. ii. 166, wrote of 'young men whom Aristotle thought unfit to hear moral 
philosophy.' But the alleged error of substituting moral for political philosophy in 
Aristotle's text is more apparent than real. By ^ political ' philosophy Aristotle, as 
his context amply shows, meant the ethics of civil society, which are hardly distin- 
guishable from what is commonly called 'morals.' In the summary paraphrase of 
Aristotle's Ethics which was translated into English from the Italian, and published 
in 1547, the passage to which both Shakespeare and Bacon refer is not rendered 
literally, but its general drift is given as a warning that moral philosophy is not a fit 
subject for study by youths who are naturally passionate and headstrong. Such 
an interpretation of Aristotle's language is common among sixteenth and seventeenth 
century writers. Erasmus, in the epistle at the close of his popular Colloquia 



THE BACON-SHAKESPEARE CONTROVERSY 387 

enigmatic references in his correspondence to secret 'recrea- 
tions' and 'alphabets' and concealed poems for which his 
alleged employment as a concealed dramatist can alone account. 
Sir Tobie ^^^ Tobie Matthew wrote to Bacon (as Viscount St. 
Matthew's Albans) at an uncertain date after January 1621: 
'The most prodigious wit that ever I knew of my 
nation and of this side of the sea is of your Lordship's name, 
though he be known by another.' ^ This unpretending sentence 
is distorted into conclusive evidence that Bacon wrote works 
of commanding excellence under another's name, and among 
them probably Shakespeare's plays. According to the only 
sane interpretation of Matthew's words, his 'most prodigious 
wit' was some Englishman named Bacon whom he met abroad 
— probably a pseudonymous Jesuit like most of Matthew's 
friends. There is little doubt that Matthew referred to Father 
Thomas Southwell, a learned Jesuit domiciled chiefly in the 
Low Countries, whose real surname was Bacon. (He was born 
in 1592 at Sculthorpe, near Walsingham, Norfolk, being son of 
Thomas Bacon of that place; he died at Watten in 1637.) ^ 

Joseph C. Hart (U.S. Consul at Santa Cruz, d. 1855), ^^ 
his 'Romance of Yachting' (1848), first raised doubts of 



(Florence, 1531, sig. Q q), wrote of his endeavour to insinuate serious precepts 'into 
the minds of young men whom Aristotle rightly described as unfit auditors of moral 
philosophy' ('in animos adolescentium, quos recte scripsit Aristoteles inidoneos 
auditores ethicae philosophise'). In the Latin play, Pedantius (i58i?),a philosopher 
tells his pupil, ' Tu non es idoneus auditor moralis philosophise' (1. 327). In a French 
translation of the Ethics by the Comte de Plessis (Paris, 1553), the passage is ren- 
dered 'parquoy le ieune enfant n'est sufi&sant auditeur de la science civile'; and an 
English commentator (in a manuscript note written about 1605 in a copy in the 
British Museum) Englished the sentence: 'Whether a young man may be a fitte 
scholler of morall philosophie.' In 1622 an Italian essayist, Virgilio Malvezzi, in his 
preface to his Discorsi sopra Cornelia Tacito, has the remark, 'E non e discordante 
da questa mia opinione Aristotele, il qual dice, che i giovani non sono buoni ascul- 
tatoii delle morali' (cf. Spedding, Works of Bacon, i. 739, iii. 440). 

' Cf. Birch, Letters of Bacon, 1763, p. 392. A foolish suggestion has been made 
that Matthew was referring to Francis Bacon's brother Anthony, who died in 1601 ; 
Matthew was writing of a man who was alive more than twenty years later, 

' It was with reference to a book published by this man that Sir Henry Wotton 
wrote, in language somewhat resembling Sir Tobie Matthew's, to Sir Edmund Bacon, 
half-brother to the great Francis Bacon, on December 5, 1638: 'The Book of Con- 
troversies issued under the name of F. Baconus hath this addition to the said name, 
alias Southwell, ks those of that Society shift their names as often as their shirts' 
{Reliquice Wottoniance, 1672, p. 475). 



388 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

Shakespeare's authorship. There followed in a like temper 'Who 
wrote Shakespeare?' in 'Chambers's Journal,' August 7, 1852, 

and an article by Miss Delia Bacon in 'Putnams' 
Sponents. Monthly,' January 1856. On the latter was based 'The 

Philosophy of the Plays of Shakespeare unfolded by 
Delia Bacon,' with a neutral preface by Nathaniel Hawthorne, 
London and Boston, 1857. Miss Delia Bacon, who was the first 
to spread abroad a spirit of scepticism respecting the established 
facts of Shakespeare's career, died insane on September 2, 
1859/ Mr. William Henry Smith, a resident in London, seems 
first to have suggested the Baconian hypothesis in 'Was Lord 
Bacon the author of Shakespeare's plays ? — a letter to Lord 
Ellesmere' (1856), which was republished as 'Bacon and 
Shakespeare' (1857). The most learned exponent of this 
strange theory was Nathaniel Holmes, an American lawyer, 
who published at New York in 1866 'The Authorship of the 
Plays attributed to Shakespeare,' a monument of misapplied 
ingenuity (4th edit. 1886, 2 vols.). Bacon's 'Promus of Formu- 
laries and Elegancies,' a commonplace book in Bacon's hand- 
writing in the British Museum (London, 1883), was first edited 
by Mrs. Henry Pott, a voluminous advocate of the Baconian 
theory; it contained many words and phrases common to the 
works of 'Bacon and Shakespeare, and Mrs. Pott pressed the 
argument from parallelisms of expression to its extremest 
limits. Mr. Edwin Reed's 'Bacon and Shake-speare ' (2 vols., 
Boston, 1902), continues the wasteful labours of Holmes and 

Mrs. Pott. The Baconian theory has found its widest 
?n^ America, acceptance in America. There it achieved its 

wildest manifestation in the book called 'The Great 
Cryptogram: Francis Bacon's Cypher in the so-called Shake- 
speare Plays' (Chicago and London, 1887, 2 vols.), which was 
the work of Mr. Ignatius Donnelly of Hastings, Minnesota. 
The author professed to apply to the First Folio text a numerical 
cypher which enabled him to pick out letters at certain intervals 
forming words and sentences which stated that Bacon was 
author not merely of Shakespeare's plays, but also of Marlowe's 
work, Montaigne's 'Essays,' and Burton's 'Anatomy of Melan- 
choly.' Many refutations have been published of Mr. Donnelly's 

» Cf. Life by Theodore Bacon, London, 1888. 



THE BACON-SHAKESPEARE CONTROVERSY 389 

arbitrary and baseless contention. Another bold effort to dis- 
cover in the First Folio a cypher-message in the Baconian 
interest was made by Mrs. Gallup, of Detroit, in 'The Bi- 
Literal Cypher of Francis Bacon' (1900). The absurdity of 
this endeavour was demonstrated in numerous letters and 
articles published in The Times newspaper (December 1901- 
January 1902). The attitude of scepticism in regard to the 
'Shakespearean tradition' has found more moderate expression 
of late in Judge Webb's 'The Mystery of William Shakespeare' 
(1902) and Mr. G. C. Bompas's 'The Problem of the Shakespeare 
Plays' (1902). A wholesome corrective to the whole argument 
of doubt may be found in Mr. Charles Allen's 'Notes on the 
Bacon-Shakespeare Question' (Boston, 1900). 

A Bacon Society was founded in London in 1885 to develop 
and promulgate the unintelligible theory, and it inaugurated a 
magazine (named since May 1893 'Baconiana'). A quarterly 
J, periodical also called 'Baconiana,' and issued in 

of the the same interest, was established at Chicago in 

era ure. 13^2. 'The Bibliography of the Shakespeare-Bacon 
Controversy' by W. H. Wyman, Cincinnati, 1884, gives the 
titles of two hundred and fifty-five books or pamphlets on both 
sides of the subject, published since 1848; the list was continued 
during 1886 in 'Shakespeariana,' a monthly journal published 
at Philadelphia, and might now be extended to fully twice its 
original number. 

The abundance of the contemporary evidence attesting 
Shakespeare's responsibility for the works published under his 
name gives the Baconian theory no rational right to a hearing; 
while such authentic examples of Bacon's effort to write verse 
as survive prove beyond all possibility of contradiction that, 
great as he was as a prose writer and a philosopher, he was 
incapable of penning any of the poetry assigned to Shake- 
speare. Defective knowledge and illogical or casuistical argu- 
ment alone render any other conclusion possible. 



39Q WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 



III 

THE YOUTHFUL CAREER OF THE EARL OF 
SOUTHAMPTON 

From the dedicatory epistles addressed by Shakespeare^ to the 
Earl of Southampton in the opening pages of his two narrative 
poems, 'Venus and Adonis' (1593) and 'Lucrece' 
ampton and (i594)/ from the account given by Sir William 
Shake- D'Avenant, and recorded by Nicholas Rowe, of the 

speare. . ' -^ ' 

earl's liberal bounty to the poet,^ and from the lan- 
guage of the 'Sonnets,' it is abundantly clear that Shakespeare 
enjoyed very friendly relations with Southampton from the time 
when his genius was nearing its maturity. No contemporary 
document or tradition gives the faintest suggestion that Shake- 
speare was the friend or protege of any man of rank other than 
Southampton; and the student of Shakespeare's biography has 
reason to ask for some information respecting him who enjoyed 
the exclusive distinction of serving Shakespeare as his patron. 

Southampton was a patron worth cultivating. Both his 
parents came of the New Nobility, and enjoyed vast wealth. 
His father's father was Lord Chancellor under Henry VIII, 
and when the monasteries were dissolved, although he was 
faithful to the old religion, he was granted rich estates in 
Hampshire, including the abbeys of Titchfield and 
Beaulieu in the New Forest. He was created Earl 
of Southampton early in Edward VI's reign, and, dying shortly 
afterwards, was succeeded by his only son, the father of Shake- 
speare's friend. The second earl loved magnificence in his 
household. 'He was highly reverenced and favoured of all that 
were of his own rank, and bravely attended and served by the 

See pp. 78, 81, 131. ? See p. 130, 



THE YOUTHFUL CAREER OF SOUTHAMPTON 39 1 

best gentlemen of those counties wherein he lived. His muster- 
roll never consisted of four lacqueys and a coachman, but of 
a whole troop of at least a hundred well-mounted gentlemen 
and yeomen.' ^ The second earl remained a Catholic, like his 
father, and a chivalrous avowal of sympathy with Mary Queen 
of Scots procured him a term of imprisonment in the year 
preceding his distinguished son's birth. At a youthful age 
he married a lady of fortune, Mary Browne, daughter of the 
first Viscount Montague, also a Catholic. Her portrait, now 
at Welbeck, was painted in her early married days, and 
shows regularly formed features beneath bright auburn hair. 
Two sons and a daughter were the issue of the union. Shake- 
speare's friend, the second son, was born at her father's 

residence, Cowdray House, near Midhurst, on 
Oct. 6?^ 5 73. October 6, 1573. He was thus Shakespeare's junior 

by nine years and a half. 'A goodly boy, God bless 
him ! ' exclaimed the gratified father, writing of his birth to a 
friend.^ But the father barely survived the boy's infancy. He 
died at the early age of thirl y-five — two days before the child's 
eighth birthday. The elder son was already dead. Thus, on 
October 4, 1581, the second and only surviving son became 
third Earl of Southampton, and entered on his great inheri- 
tance.^ 

As was customary in the case of an infant peer, the little 
earl became a royal ward — *a child of state' — and Lord 
Burghley, the Prime Minister, acted as the boy's guardian in 
the Queen's behalf. Burghley had good reason to be satisfied 

with his ward's intellectual promise. 'He spent,' 

Education. ., . , ., n i 1.1 

wrote a contemporary, his childhood and other 
younger terms in the study of good letters.' At the age of 
twelve, in the autumn of 1585, he was admitted to St. John's 
College, Cambridge, ''the sweetest nurse of knowledge in all 
the University.' Southampton breathed easily the cultured 

I Gervase Markham, Honour in his Perfection, 1624. 

^ Loseley MSS. ed. A. J. Kempe, p. 240. 

3 His mother, after thirteen years of widowhood, married in 1594 Sir Thomas 
Heneage, vice-chamberlain of Queen Elizabeth's household; but he died within a 
year, and in 1596 she took a third husband, Sir William Hervey, who distinguished 
himself in military service in Ireland and was created a peer as Lord Hervey by 
James I. 



392 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

atmosphere. Next summer he sent his guardian, Burghley, an 
essay in Ciceronian Latin on the somewhat cynical text that 
'All men are moved to the pursuit of virtue by the hope of 
reward.' The argument, if unconvincing, is precocious. 'Every 
man,' the boy tells us, 'no matter how well or how ill endowed 
with the graces of humanity, whether in the enjoyment of great 
honour or condemned to obscurity, experiences that yearning 
for glory which alone begets virtuous endeavour.' The paper, 
still preserved at Hatfield, is a model of caligraphy; every 
letter is shaped with delicate regularity, and betrays a refine- 
ment most uncommon in boys of thirteen.^ Southampton 
remained at the University for some two years, graduating 
M.A. at sixteen in 1589. Throughout his after life he cherished 
for his college 'great love and affection.' 

Before leaving Cambridge, Southampton entered his name 
at Gray's Inn. Some knowledge of law was deemed needful in 
one who was to control a landed property that was not only 
large already but likely to grow.^ Meanwhile he was sedu- 
lously cultivating his literary tastes. He took into his 
'pay and patronage' John Florio, the well-known author and 
Italian tutor, and was soon, according to Florio's testimony, as 
thoroughly versed in Italian as 'teaching or learning' could 
make him. 

'When he was young,' wrote a later admirer, 'no ornament 
of youth was wanting in him'; and it was naturally to the 
Court that his friends sent him at an early age to display his 
varied graces. He can hardly have been more than seventeen 
when he was presented to his sovereign. She showed him 
kindly notice, and the Earl of Essex, her brilliant favourite, 
acknowledged his fascination. Thenceforth Essex displayed in 

1 By kind permission of the Marquis of Salisbiiry I lately copied out this essay at 
Hatfield. 

2 In 1588 his brother-in-law, Thomas Arundel, afterwards first Lord Arundel of 
Wardour (husband of his only sister, Mary), petitioned Lord Burghley to grant him 
an additional tract of the New Forest about his house at Beaulieu. Although in his 
'nonage,' Arundel wrote, the Earl was by no means 'of the smallest hope.' Arundel, 
with almost prophetic insight, added that the Earl of Pembroke was Southampton's 
'most feared rival' in the competition for the land in question. Arundel was refer- 
ring to the father of that third Earl of Pembroke who, despite the absence of evidence, 
has been described as Shakespeare's friend of the Sonnets (cf. Calendar of Hatfield 
MSS. iii. 365). 



THE YOUTHFUL CAREER OF SOUTHAMPTON 393 

his welfare a brotherly interest which proved in course of time 
a very doubtful blessing. 

While still a boy, Southampton entered with as much 
zest into the sports and dissipations of his fellow-courtiers as 
Recognition ^^^^ ^^eir literary and artistic pursuits. At tennis, 
of South- in jousts and tournaments, he achieved distinction; 

ampton s •" 1 i 1 . 1 r 1 1 • 

youthful nor was he a stranger to the delights of gamblmg at 
beauty. primero. In 1592, when he was in his eighteenth 

year, he was recognised as the most handsome and accom- 
plished of all the young lords who frequented the royal presence. 
In the autumn of that year Elizabeth paid Oxford a visit in 
state. Southampton was in the throng of noblemen who bore 
her company. In a Latin poem describing the brilliant cere- 
monial, which was published at the time at the University Press, 
eulogy was lavished without stint on all the Queen's attendants; 
but the academic poet declared that Southampton's personal 
attractions exceeded those of any other in the royal train. 'No 
other youth who was present,' he wrote, 'was more beautiful 
than this prince of Hampshire (quo non formosior alter affuit), 
nor more distinguished in the arts of learning, although as yet 
tender down scarce bloomed on his cheek.' The last words 
testify to Southampton's boyish appearance.^ Next year it was 
rumoured that his 'external grace' was to receive signal recog- 
nition by his admission, despite his juvenility, to the Order of 
the Garter. 'There be no Knights of the Garter new chosen as 
yet,' wrote a well-informed courtier on May 3, 1593, 'but there 
were four nominated.' ^ Three were eminent public servants, 
but first on the list stood the name of young Southampton. The 
purpose did not take effect, but the compliment of nomination 
was, at his age, without precedent outside the circle of the 
sovereign's kinsmen. On November 17, 1595, he appeared in 
the lists set up in the Queen's presence in honour of the 

' Cf. Apollinis et Musarum'E.vKTLKa EtSuAAia, Oxford, 1592, reprinted in Eliza- 
bethan Oxford (Oxford Historical Society), edited by Charles Plummer, xxix. 294: 

Post hunc (i.e. Earl of Essex) insequitur clara de stirpe Dynasta 
Comes Jure suo diuesquem South-Hamptonia magnum 

Hamly- Vendicat heroem; quo non formosior alter 

tonics. Affuit, aut docta iuuenis praestantior arte; 

Ora licet tenera vix dum lanugine vernent. 
* Historical MSS. Commission, 7th Report (Appendix), p. 521 b. 



394 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

thirty-seventh anniversary of her accession. The poet George 
Peele pictured in blank verse the gorgeous scene, and Hkened 
the Earl of Southampton to that ancient type of chivalry, Bevis 
of Southampton, so 'valiant in arms,' so 'gentle and debonair, 
did he appear to all beholders.' ^ 

But clouds were rising on this sunlit horizon. Southampton, 
a wealthy peer without brothers or uncles, was the only male 
representative of his house. A lawful heir was essential to 
the entail of his great possessions. Early marriages — child- 
marriages — were in vogue in all ranks of society, and South- 
ampton's mother and guardian regarded matrimony at a 

tender age as especially incumbent on him in view 
to^marry.^^ of his rich heritage. When he was seventeen 

Burghley accordingly offered him a wife in the 
person of his granddaughter. Lady EHzabeth Vere, eldest 
daughter of his daughter Anne and of the Earl of Oxford. 
The Countess of Southampton approved the match, and told 
Burghley that her son was not averse from it. Her wish was 
father to the thought. Southampton declined to marry to 
order, and, to the confusion of his friends, was still a bachelor 
when he came of age in 1594. Nor even then did there seem 
much prospect of his changing his condition. He was in 
some ways as young for his years in inward disposition as in 
outward appearance. Although gentle and amJable in most 
relations of life, he could be childishly self-willed and impulsive, 
and outbursts of anger involved him, at Court and elsewhere, in 
many petty quarrels which were with difficulty settled without 
bloodshed. Despite his rank and wealth, he was consequently 
accounted by many ladies of far too uncertain a temper 
to sustain marital responsibilities with credit. Lady Bridget 
Manners, sister of his friend the Earl of Rutland, was in 
1594 looking to matrimony for means of release from the 
servitude of a lady-in-waiting to the Queen. Her guardian 
suggested that Southampton or the Earl of Bedford, who was 
intimate with Southampton and exactly of his age, would be 
an eligible suitor. Lady Bridget dissented. Southampton 
and his friend were, she objected, 'so young,' 'fantastical,' 
and volatile ('so easily carried away'), that should ill fortune 

» Peele 's Anglorum Feria. 



THE YOUTHFUL CAREER OF SOUTHAMPTON 395 

befall her mother, who was 'her only stay,' she 'doubted 
their carriage of themselves.' She spoke, she said, from 
observation.^ 

In 1595, at two-and-twenty, Southampton justified Lady 
Bridget's censure by a public proof of his fallibility. The 
^ . fair Mistress Vernon (first cousin of the Earl of 

Intrigue 

with Eliza- Essex), a passionatc beauty of the Court, cast her 
e ernon. gpgj| ^^ j^jj-^^ jjgj. yirtue was none too stable, and 

in September the scandal spread that Southampton was court- 
ing her 'with too much familiarity.' 

The entanglement with 'his fair mistress' opened a new 
chapter in Southampton's career, and life's tempests began in 
earnest. Either to free himself from his mistress's toils, or to 
divert attention from his intrigue, he in 1596 withdrew from 
Court and sought sterner occupation. Despite *his mistress's 
lamentations, which the Court gossips duly chronicled, he played 
a part with his friend Essex in the military and naval expedi- 
tion to Cadiz in 1596, and in that to the Azores in 1597. He 
developed a martial ardour which brought him renown, and 
Mars (his admirers said) vied with Mercury for his allegiance. 
He travelled on the Continent, and finally, in 1598, he accepted 
a subordinate place in the suite of the Queen's Secretary, Sir 

Robert Cecil, who was going on an embassy to 
Marriage m p^^-^ -g^^ Mistress Vernon was still fated to be his 

evil genius, and Southampton learnt while in Paris 
that her condition rendered marriage essential to her decaying 
reputation. He hurried to London and, yielding his own 
scruples to her entreaties, secretly made her his wife during the 
few days he stayed in this country. The step was full of peril. 
To marry a lady of the Court without the Queen's consent 
infringed a prerogative of the Crown by which Elizabeth set 
exaggerated store. 

' Cal. of the Duke of Rutland's MSS. i. 321. Barnabe Barnes, who was one of 
Southampton's poetic admirers, addressed a crude sonnet to ' the Beautiful Lady, The 
Lady Bridget Manners,' in 15Q3, at the same time as he addressed one to South- 
ampton. Both are appended to Barnes's collection of sonnets and other poems 
entitled Parthenophe and Parthenophil (cf. Arber's Garner, v. 486). Barnes apostro- 
phises Lady Bridget as ' fairest and sweetest 

Of all those sweet and fair flowers, 

The pride of chaste Cynthia's [i.e. Queen Elizabeth's] rich crown.' 



396 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

The story of Southampton's marriage was soon public pro- 
perty. His wife quickly became a mother, and when he crossed 
the Channel a few weeks later to revisit her he was received by 
pursuivants, who had the Queen's orders to carry him to the Fleet 
prison. For the time his career was ruined. Although he was 
soon released from gaol, all avenues to the Queen's favour were 
closed to him. He sought employment in the wars in Ireland, 
but high command was denied him. Helpless and hopeless, he 
late in 1600 joined Essex, another fallen favourite, in fomenting 
a rebellion in London, in order to regain by force the positions 
each had forfeited. The attempt at insurrection failed, and 
the conspirators stood their trial on a capital charge of treason 
. . on February lo, 1600-1. Southampton was con- 

Impnson- . 

ment, demned to die, but the Queen's Secretary pleaded 

^ °^ ^' with her that 'the poor young earl, merely for the 

love of Essex, had been drawn into this action,' and his punish- 
ment was commuted, to imprisonment for life. Further mitiga- 
tion was not to be looked for while the Queen lived. But Essex, 
Southampton's friend, had been James's sworn ally. The first 
act of James I as monarch of England was to set Southampton 
free (April 10, 1603). After a confinement of more than two 
years, Southampton resumed, under happier auspices, his place 
at Court. 

Southampton's later career does not directly concern the 
student of Shakespeare's biography. After Shakespeare had 
congratulated Southampton on his liberty in his 
Sonnet cvii., there is no trace of further relations 
between them, although there is no reason to doubt that they 
remained friends to the end. Southampton on his release from 
prison was immediately installed a Knight of the Garter, and 
was appointed governor of the Isle of Wight, while an Act of 
Parliament relieved him of all the disabilities incident to his 
conviction of treason. He was thenceforth a prominent figure 
in Court festivities. He twice danced a correnta with the 
Queen at the magnificent entertainment given at Whitehall on 
August 19, 1604, in honour of the Constable of Castile, the 
special ambassador of Spain, who had come to sign a treaty of 
peace between his sovereign and James I.^ But home politics 

^ See p. 241, note 3. 



THE YOUTHFUL CAREER OF SOUTHAMPTON 397 

proved no congenial field for the exercise of Southampton's 
energies. Quarrels with fellow-courtiers continued to jeopardise 
his fortunes. With Sir Robert Cecil, with Philip Herbert, Earl of 
Montgomery, and with the Duke of Buckingham he had violent 
disputes. It was in the schemes for colonising the New World 
that Southampton found an outlet for his impulsive activity. 
He helped to equip expeditions to Virginia, and acted as 
treasurer of the Virginia Company. The map of the country 
commemorates his labours as a colonial pioneer. In his 
honour were named Southampton Hundred, Hampton River, 
and Hampton Roads in Virginia. Finally, in the summer of 
1624, at the age of fifty-one, Southampton, with characteristic 
spirit, took command of a troop of English volunteers which 
was raised to aid the Elector Palatine, husband of James I's 
daughter Elizabeth, in his struggle with the Emperor and the 
Catholics of Central Europe, With him went his eldest son. 
Lord Wriothesley. Both on landing in the Low Countries were 
attacked by fever. The younger man succumbed at once. The 
Earl regained sufficient strength to accompany his son's body 
Death on ^^ Bergen-op-Zoom, but there, on November 10, he 
Nov. 10, himself died of a lethargy. Father and son were 
^ ^'** both buried in the chancel of the church of Titch- 

field, Hampshire, on December 28. Southampton thus outlived 
Shakespeare by more than eight years. 



398 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 



IV 

THE EARL OF SOUTHAMPTON AS A LITERARY 

PATRON 

Southampton's close relations with men of letters of his 
time give powerful corroboration of the theory that he was the 
patron whom Shakespeare commemorated in the 'Sonnets.' 
From earliest to latest manhood — throughout the dissipations 
of Court life, amid the torments that his intrigue cost him, in the 
distractions of war and travel — the earl never ceased to cherish 
the passion for hterature which was implanted in him in boy- 
hood. His devotion to his old college, St. John's, is charac- 
teristic. When a new library was in course of construction 
e .. there during the closing years of his life; Southamp- 

ton's collec- ton collected books to the value of 360/. wherewith 

to furnish it. This 'monument of love,' as the 
College authorities described the benefaction, may still be seen 
on the shelves of the College library. The gift largely consisted 
of illuminated manuscripts — books of hours, legends of the 
saints, and mediaeval chronicles. Southampton caused his son 
to be educated at St. John's, and his wife expressed to the 
tutors the hope that the boy would 'imitate' his father 'in his 
love to learning and to them.' 

Even the State papers and business correspondence in 
which Southampton's career is traced are enlivened by refer- 
ences to his literary interests. Especially refreshing are the 
active signs vouchsafed there of his sympathy with the great 

birth of English drama. It was with plays that he 
in^isietters joined Other noblemen in 1598 in entertaining his 
topo^emsand ^hief, Sir Robert Cecil, on the eve of the departure 

for Paris of that embassy in which Southampton 
served Cecil as a secretary. In July following Southampton 
contrived to enclose in an ofl&cial despatch from Paris 'certain 
songs' which he was anxious that Sir Robert Sidney, a friend 



SOUTHAMPTON AS A LITERARY PATRON 399 

of literary tastes, should share his delight in reading. Twelve 
months later, while Southampton was in Ireland, a letter to him 
from the countess attested that current literature was an every- 
day topic of their private talk. 'All the news I can send you,' 
she wrote to her husband, 'that I think will make you merry, is 
that I read in a letter from London that Sir John Falstaff is, by 
his mistress Dame Pintpot, made father of a goodly miller's thumb 
— a boy that's all head and very little body; but this is a secret.' ^ 
This cryptic sentence proves on the part of both earl and 
countess familiarity with Falstaff's adventures in Shakespeare's 
'Henry IV,' where the fat knight apostrophised Mrs. Quickly 
as 'good pint pot' (Pt. I. 11. iv. 443). Who the acquaintances 
were about whom the countess jested thus lightly does not 
appear, but that Sir John, the father of 'the boy that was all 
head and very little body,' was a playful allusion to Sir John's 
creator is by no means beyond the bounds of possibility. In 
the letters of Sir Tobie Matthew, many of which were written 
very early in the seventeenth century (although first published 
in 1660), the sobriquet of Sir John Falstaff seems to have been 
bestowed on Shakespeare: 'As that excellent author Sir John 
Falstaff sayes, "what for your businesse, news, device, foolerie, 
and libertie, I never dealt better since I was a man."' ^ 

When, after leaving Ireland, Southampton spent the autumn 
of 1599 in London, it was recorded that he and his friend Lord 
Rutland 'come not to Court' but 'pass away the time merely in 

going to plays every day.' ^ It seems that the fas- 
Se theatre, cination that the drama had for Southampton and his 

friends led them to exaggerate the influence that it was 
capable of exerting on the emotions of the multitude. South- 
ampton and Essex in February 1601 requisitioned and paid for 
the revival of Shakespeare's 'Richard II' at the Globe Theatre 
on the day preceding that fixed for their insurrection, in the hope 
that the play-scene of the deposition of a king might excite 
the citizens of London to countenance their rebellious design.* 
Imprisonment sharpened Southampton's zest for the theatre. 

^ The original letter is at Hatfield. The whole is printed in Historical Manu- 
scripts Commission, 3rd Rep. p. 145. 

» The quotation is a confused reminiscence of Falstafif's remarks in i Henry IV ^ 
it. iv. The last nine words are an exact quotation of lines 190-1. 

3 Sidney Papers, ii. 132, * See p. 181. 



400 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

Within a year of his release from the Tower in 1603 he enter* 
tained Queen Anne of Denmark at his house in the Strand, 
and Burbage and his fellow players, one of whom was Shake- 
speare, were bidden to present the 'old' play of 'Love's Labour's 
Lost,' whose 'wit and mirth' were calculated 'to please her 
Majesty exceedingly.' 

But these are merely accidental testimonies to Southampton's 
literary predilections. It is in hterature itself, not in the prosaic 
records of his political or domestic life, that the amplest proofs 
survive of his devotion to letters. From the hour that, as a 
handsome and accomplished lad, he joined the Court and made 

London his chief home, authors acknowledged his 
adulation. appreciation of literary effort of almost every quality 

and form. He had in his Italian tutor Florio, whose 
circle of acquaintance included all men of literary reputation, a 
mentor who allowed no work of promise to escape his obser- 
vation. Every note in the scale of adulation was sounded in 
Southampton's honour in contemporary prose and verse. Soon 
after the pubHcation, in April 1593, of Shakespeare's 'Venus 
and Adonis,' with its salutation of Southampton, a more youth- 
g ^ , ful apprentice to the poet's craft, Barnabe Barnes, 

Barnes's confided to a published sonnet of unrestrained 
Sonne , 1593. fgJ.yQ^J. ]^jg conviction that Southampton's eyes — 
'those heavenly lamps' — were the only sources of true poetic 
inspiration. The sonnet, which is superscribed 'to the Right 
Noble and Virtuous Lord, Henry, Earl of Southampton,' runs: 

Receive, sweet Lord, with thy thrice sacred hand 
(Which sacred Muses make their instrument) 
These worthless leaves, which I to thee present, 
(Sprung from a rude and unmanured land) 
That with your countenance graced, they may withstand 
Hundred-eyed Envy's rough encounterment, 
Whose patronage can give encouragement 
To scorn back-wounding Zoilus his band. 
Vouchsafe, right virtuous Lord, with gracious eyes — 
Those heavenly lamps which give the Muses light, 
Which give and take in course that holy fire — 
To view my Muse with your judicial sight: 
Whom, when time shall have taught, by flight, to rise, 
Shall to thy virtues, of much worth, aspire. 



SOUTHAMPTON AS A LITERARY PATRON 40I 

Next year a writer of greater power, Tom Nash, betrayed 
little less enthusiasm when dedicating to the earl his masterly 

essay in romance, 'The Life of Jack Wilton.' He 
aSdre^es describes Southampton, who was then scarcely of 

age, as 'a dear lover and cherisher as well of the 
lovers of poets as of the poets themselves.' 'A new brain,' he 
exclaims, 'a. new wit, a new style, a new soul, will I get me, to 
canonise your name to posterity, if in this my first attempt I am 
not taxed of presumption.' ^ Although 'Jack Wilton' was the 
first book Nash formally dedicated to Southampton, it is probable 
that Nash had made an earlier bid for the earl's patronage. In 
a digression at the close of his 'Pierce Pennilesse' he grows 
eloquent in praise of one whom he entitles 'the matchless image 
of honour and magnificent rewarder of vertue, Jove's eagle- 
borne Ganimede, thrice noble Amintas.' In a sonnet addressed 
to 'this renowned lord,' who 'draws all hearts to his love,' Nash 
expresses regret that the great poet, Edmund Spenser, had 
omitted to celebrate 'so special a pillar of nobility' in the series 
of adulatory sonnets prefixed to the 'Faerie Queene;' and in the 
last lines of his sonnet Nash suggests that Spenser suppressed 
the nobleman's name 

Because few words might not comprise thy fame.^ 

' See Nash's Works, ed. Grosart, v. 6. The whole passage runs: 'How wel or ill 
I haue done in it I am ignorant: (the eye that sees round about it selfe sees not into 
it selfe): only your Honours applauding encouragement hath power to make me 
arrogant. Incomprehensible is the height of your spirit both in heroical resolution 
and matters of conceit. Vnrepriuebly perisheth that booke whatsoeuer to wast 
paper, which on the diamond rocke of your judgement disasterly chanceth to be ship- 
wrackt. A dere louer and cherisher you are, as well of the louers of Poets, as of 
Poets them selues. Amongst their sacred number I dare not ascribe my selfe, though 
now and then I speak English: that smal braine I haue, to no fm-ther vse I conuert 
saue to be kinde to my frends, and fatall to my enemies. A new brain, a new wit, 
a new stile, a new soule will I get mee to canonize your name to posteritie, if in this 
my first attempt I am not taxed of presumption. Of your gracious fauer I despairc 
not, for I am not altogether Fames out-cast. . . . Your Lordship is the large spread- 
ing branch of renown, from whence these my idle leaues seeke to deriue their whole 
nourishing.' 

2 The complimentary title of 'Amyntas,' which was naturalised in English lit- 
erature by Abraham Fraunce's two renderings of Tasso's Aminta — one direct from 
the Italian and the other from the Latin version of Thomas Watson — - was apparently 
bestowed by Spenser on the Earl of Derby in his Colin Clouts come Home againe 
*.i595)". and some critics assume that Nash referred in Pierce Pennilesse to that 
nobleman rather than to Southampton. But Nash's comparison of his paragon 
to Ganymede suggests extreme youth, and Southampton was nineteen in 1592 while 
2D 



402 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

Southampton was beyond doubt the nobleman in question 
It is certain, too, that the Earl of Southampton was among 
the young men for whom Nash, in hope of gain, as he admitted, 
penned 'amorous villanellos and qui passas.' One of the least 
reputable of these efforts of Nash survives in an obscene love- 
poem entitled 'The Choise of Valentines,' which may be 
dated in 1595. Not only was this dedicated to Southampton 
in a prefatory sonnet, but in an epilogue, again in the form of a 
sonnet, Nash addressed his young patron as his 'friend.' ^ 

Derby was thirty-three. 'Amyntas' as a complimentary designation was widely 
used by the poets, and was not applied exclusively to any one patron of letters. It 
was bestowed on the poet Watson by Richard Barnfield and by other of Watson's 
panegyrists. 

I Two manuscript copies of the poem, which was printed (privately) for the first 
time, under the editorship of Mr. John S. Farmer, in iSgg, are extant — one among 
the Rawlinson poetical manuscripts in the Bodleian Library, and the other among 
the manuscripts in the Inner Temple Library (No. 538) The opening dedicatory 
sonnet, which is inscribed 'to the right honorable the Lord S[outhampton]' runs: 

' Pardon, sweete flower of matchles poetrye, 

And fairest bud the red rose euer bare. 
Although my muse, devorst from deeper care, . 

Presents thee with a wanton Elegie. 
' Ne blame my verse of loose unchastitye 

For painting forth the things that hidden are, 
Since all men act what I in speeche declare, 

Onlie induced with varietie. 
'Complaints and praises, every one can write, 

And passion out their pangs in statlie rimes; 
But of loues pleasures none did euer write, 

That have succeeded in theis latter times. 
'Accept of it, deare Lord, in gentle parte, 
And better lines, ere long shall honor thee.' 
The poem follows in about three hundred lines, and is succeeded by a second sonnet 
addressed by Nash to his patron: 

'Thus hath my penne presum'd to please my friend. 

Oh mightst thou lykewise please Apollo's eye. 
No, Honor brookes no such impietie. 

Yet Ovid's wanton muse did not offend. 
"He is the f ountaine whence my streames do flowe — 

Forgive me if I speak as I was taught; 
Alike to women, utter all I knowe, 

As longing to unlade so bad a fraught. 
'My mynde once purg'd of such lascivious witf, 

With purified words and hallowed verse. 
Thy praises in large volumes shall rehearse. 

That better maie thy grauer view befitt. 
'Meanwhile ytt rests, you smile at what I write 
Or for attempting banish me your sight. 

' Tho. Nash.' ' 



SOUTHAMPTON AS A LTrERARY PATRON 403 



4t 



Meanwhile, in 1595, the versatile Gervase Markham in- 
scribed to Southampton, in a sonnet, his patriotic poem on Sir 

Richard Grenville's glorious fight off the Azores. 
sonnet!^iS9S- ^s-^kham was not content to acknowledge with Barnes 

the inspiriting force of his patron's eyes, but with 
blasphemous temerity asserted that the sweetness of his hp3, 
which stilled the music of the spheres, deHghted the ear of 
Almighty God. Markham's sonnet runs somewhat haltingly 
thus : 

Thou glorious laurel of the Muses' hill, 

Whose eyes doth crown the most victorious pen, 
Bright lamp of virtue, in whose sacred skill 

Lives all the bliss of ear-enchanting men. 
From graver subjects of thy grave assays, 

Bend thy courageous thoughts unto these lines — 
The grave from whence my humble Muse doth raise 
True honour's spirit in her rough designs — 
And when the stubborn stroke of my harsh song 
Shall seasonless glide through Almighty ears 
Vouchsafe to sweet it with thy blessed tongue 
Whose well-tuned sound stills music in the spheres; 

So shall my tragic lays be blest by thee 

And from thy lips suck their eternity. 

Subsequently Florio, in associating the earl's name with his 
great Italian-English dictionary — the 'Worlde of Wordes' — 

more soberly defined the earl's place in the repubhc 
dress° 1=598^ of letters when he wrote: 'As to me and many more 

the glorious and gracious sunshine of your honour 
hath infused light and Hfe.' ^ 

' In 1600 Edward Blount, a professional friend of the publisher Thorpe, dedicated 
one of his publications {The Historic of the Uniting of the Kingdom of Portugall 
to the Crowne of Castill) ' to the most noble and aboundant president both of Honor 
and Vertue, Henry Earle of Southampton.' 'In such proper and plaine language' 
(Blount wrote 'to the right honourable and worthy Earl') 'as a most humble and 
affectionate duetie I doo heere offer upon the altar of my hart, the first fruits of my 
long growing endevors; which (with much constancie and confidence) I have cher- 
ished, onely waiting this happy opportunity to make them manifest to your Lord- 
ship: where now if (in respect of the knowne distance betwixt the height of your 
Honorable spirit and the flatnesse of my poore abilities) they turne into smoake and 
vanish ere they can reach a degree of your merite, vouchsafe yet (most excellent 
Earle) to remember it was a fire that kindled them and gave them life at least, if not 
lasting. Your Honor's patronage is the onely object I aime at; and were the worthi- 
nesse of this Historie I present such as might warrant me an election out of a worlde 
of nobilitie, I woulde still pursue the happines of my first choise.' 



404 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

The most notable contribution to this chorus of praise 
is to be found, as I have already shown, in Shakespeare's 
'Sonnets.' The same note of eulogy was sounded by men of 
letters until Southampton's death. When he was released 
from prison on James I's accession in April 1603, 
gratuiations his praises in poets' mouths were especially abun- 
of the poets dant. Not only was that grateful incident cele- 

m 1603. -^ '-' 

brated by Shakespeare in what is probably the 
latest of his 'Sonnets' (No. cvii.), but Samuel Daniel and John 
Davies of Hereford offered the Earl congratulation in more 
prolonged strains. Daniel addressed to Southampton many 
lines like these: 

The world had never taken so full note 

Of what thou art, hadst thou not been undone: 

And only thy afSiction hath begot 

More fame than thy best fortunes could have woni 

For ever by adversity are wrought 
The greatest works of admiration; 

And all the fair examples of renown 

Out of distress and misery are grown 

Only the best-compos' d and worthiest hearts 

God sets to act the hard'st and constanst'st parts.* 

Davies was more jubilant: 

Now wisest men with mirth do seem stark mad, 
And cannot choose — their hearts are all so glad. 
Then let's be merry in our God and King, 
That made us merry, being ill bestead. 
Southampton, up thy cap to Heaven fling, 
And on the viol there sweet praises sing, 
For he is come that grace to all doth bring .2 

Many like praises, some of later date, by Henry Locke (or 
Lok), George Chapman, Joshua Sylvester, Richard Brathwaite, 

I Daniel's Certaine Epistles, 1603: see Daniel's Works, ed. Grosart, i. 216 seq. 
= See Preface to Davies's Microcosmos, 1603 (Davies's Works, ed. Grosart, i. 14). 
At the end of Davies's Microcosmos there is also a congratulatory sonnet addressed 
to Southampton on his liberation {ib. p. q6), beginning: 

'Welcome to shore, unhappy-happy Lord, 
From the deep seas of danger and distress 

There like thou wast to be thrown overboard -. 

In every storm of discontentedness.' 



SOUTHAMPTON AS A LITERARY PATRON 405 

George Wither, Sir John Beaumont, and others could be 
quoted. Musicians as well as poets acknowledge his culti- 
vated tastes, and a popular piece of instrumental music which 
Captain Tobias Hume included in his volume of 'Poetical 
Musicke' in 1607 bore the title of 'The Earl of Southamptons 
favoret.' ^ Sir John Beaumont,- on Southampton's death, wrote 
an elegy which panegyrises him in the varied capacities of 
warrior, councillor, courtier, father, and husband. But it is as 
a literary patron that Beaumont insists that he chiefly deserves 
remembrance : 

I keep that glory last which is the best, 
The love of learning which he oft expressed 
In conversation, and respect to those 
Who had a name in arts, in verse or prose. 

To the same effect are some twenty poems which were pub- 
lished in 1624, just after Southampton's death, in a volume en- 
Ele^ies titled 'Teares of the Isle of Wight, shed on the Tombe 

on South- of their most noble valorous and loving Captaine 
amp on. ^^^ Governour, the right honorable Henrie, Earl of 

Southampton.' The keynote is struck in the opening stanza of 
the first poem by one Francis Beale: 

Ye famous poets of the southern isle. 
Strain forth the raptures of your tragic muse, 
And with your Laureate pens come and compile 
The praises due to this great Lord: peruse 
His globe of worth, and eke his virtues brave, 
Like learned Maroes at Mecsenas' grave. 

• Other pieces in the collection bore such titles as ' The Earle of Sussex delight,* 
The Lady Arabellas favoret, ' 'The Earl of Pembrokes Galiard,' and 'Sir Christopher 
Hattons Choice ' (cf. Rimbault, BiUiotheca Madrigalia, p. 25). 



406 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 



THE TRUE HISTORY OF THOMAS THORPE 
AND 'MR. W. H: 

In 1598 Francis Meres enumerated among Shakespeare's best 
known works his ' sugar' d sonnets among his private friends.' 
None of Shakespeare's 'Sonnets' are known to have been in 
print when Meres wrote, but they were doubtless in circulation 
in manuscript. In 1599 two of them were printed for the first 

time by the piratical publisher, William Jaggard, in 
tiono^he^^' the Opening pages of the first edition of 'The 
in°i6o^^^' Passionate Pilgrim.' On January 3, 1599-1600, 

Eleazar Edgar, a publisher of small account, obtained 
a license for the publication of a work bearing the title, 'A 
Booke called Amours by J. D., with certein other Sonnetes by 
W. S.' No book answering this description is extant. In 
any case it is doubtful if Edgar's venture concerned Shake- 
speare's 'Sonnets.' It is more probable that his 'W. S.' was 
William Smith, who had published a collection of sonnets 
entitled 'Chloris ' in 1596.^ On May 20, 1609, ^ license for the 
publication of Shakespeare's 'Sonnets' was granted by the 
Stationers' Company to a publisher named Thomas Thorpe, 
and shortly afterwards the complete collection as they have 
reached us was published by Thorpe for the first time. To 

» 'Amours of J. D.' were doubtless sonnets by Sir John Davies, of which only a 
few have reached us. There is no ground for J. P. Collier's suggestion that J. D. 
was a misprint for M. D., i.e. Michael Drayton, who gave the first edition of his 
sonnets in 1594 the title of Amours. That word was in France the common designa- 
tion of collections of sonnets (cf. Drayton's Poems, ed. Collier, Roxburghe Club, 
p. xxv). 



THOMAS THORPE AND 'MR. W. H.' 407 

the volume Thorpe prefixed a dedication in the following 
terms : 

TO . THE . ONLIE . BEGETTER . OF . 

THESE . INSVING . SONNETS . 

Mr . W. H. ALL . HAPPINESSE . 

AND . THAT . ETERNITIE . 

PROMISED . 

BY . 

OUR . EVER-LIVING . POET . 

WISHETH . 

THE . WELL-WISHING . 

ADVENTURER . IN . 

SETTING . 

FORTH . 

T. T. 

The words are fantastically arranged. In ordinary gram- 
matical order they would run: 'The well-wishing adventurer 
in setting forth [i.e. the publisher] T[homas] T[horpe] wisheth 
Mr. W. H., the only begetter of these ensuing sonnets, all 
happiness and that eternity promised by our ever-Hving poet.' 

Few books of the sixteenth or seventeenth century were 
ushered into the world without a dedication. In most cases it 
was the work of the author, but numerous volumes, besides 
Shakespeare's 'Sonnets,' are extant in which the publisher (and 
not the author) fills the role of dedicator. The cause of the 
substitution is not far to seek. The signing of the dedication 
was an assertion of full and responsible ownership in the 
publication, and the publisher in Shakespeare's lifetime was the 
full and responsible owner of a publication quite as often as the 
author. The modern conception of copyright had not yet been 
evolved. Whoever in the sixteenth or early seventeenth century 
was in actual possession of a manuscript was for practical 
purposes its full and responsible owner. Literary work largely 
circulated in manuscript.'^ Scriveners made a precarious liveH- 
hood by multiplying written copies, and an enterprising pub- 
lisher had many opportunities of becoming the owner of a 
popular book without the author's sanction or knowledge. 
When a volume in the reign of Elizabeth or James I was 

» See note to p. 92 supra. 



408 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

published independently of the author, the publisher exercised 
unchallenged all the owner's rights, not the least valued of 
which was that of choosing the patron of the enterprise, and 

of penning the dedicatory compliment above his 
dedicadons. signature. Occasionally circumstances might spe- 

ciousl}^ justify the publisher's appearance in the guise 
of a dedicator. In the case of a posthumous book it sometimes 
happened that the author's friends renounced ownership or 
neglected to assert it. In other instances, the absence of an 
author from London while his work was passing through the press 
might throw on the publisher the task of supplying the dedica- 
tion without exposing him to any charge of sharp practice. But 
as a rule one of only two inferences is possible when a publisher's 
name figured at the foot of a dedicatory epistle: either the 
author was ignorant of the publisher's design, or he had refused 
to countenance it, and was openly defied. In the case of 
Shakespeare's 'Sonnets' it may safely be assumed that Shake- 
speare received no notice of Thorpe's intention of publishing 
the work, and that it was" owing to the author's ignorance of 
the design that the dedication was composed and signed by the 
'well-wishing adventurer in setting forth.' 

But whether author or publisher chose the patron of his 
wares, the choice was determined by much the same considera- 
tions. Self-interest was the principle underlying transactions 
between literary patron and protege. Publisher, like author, 
commonly chose as patron a man or woman of wealth and 
social influence who might be expected to acknowledge the 
compliment either by pecuniary reward or by friendly advertise- 
ment of the volume in their own social circle. At times the 
pubhsher, slightly extending the field of choice, selected a 
personal friend or mercantile acquaintance who had rendered 
him some service in trade or private life, and was likely to 
appreciate such general expressions of good will as were 
the accepted topic of dedications. Nothing that was fantastic 
or mysterious entered into the Elizabethan or the Jacobean pub- 
lishers' shrewd schemes of business, and it may be asserted with 
confidence that it was under the everyday prosaic conditions of cur- 
rent literary traffic that the publisher Thorpe selected 'Mr. W. H.' 
as the patron of the original edition of Shakespeare's 'Sonnets.' 



THOMAS THORPE AND 'MR. W. H.' 409 

A study of Thorpe's character and career clears the point 
of doubt. Thorpe has been described as a native of Warwick- 
Thorpe's shire, Shakespeare's county, _^ and a man eminent 
early life. [^i his profession. He was neither. He was a 
native of Barnet in Middlesex, where his father kept an inn, 
and he himself through thirty years' experience of the book 
trade held his own with difficulty in its humblest ranks. He 
enjoyed the customary preliminary training.^ At midsummer 
1584 he was apprenticed for nine years to a reputable printer 
and stationer, Richard Watkins.^ Nearly ten years later he 
took up the freedom of the Stationers' Company, and was 
thereby qualified to set up as a publisher on his own account.^ 
He was not destitute of a taste for literature; he knew scraps 
of Latin, and recognised a good manuscript when he saw one. 
But the ranks of London publishers were overcrowded, and 
such accomplishments as Thorpe possessed were poor com- 
pensation for a lack of capital or of family connections among 
those already established in the trade.* For many years he 
contented himself with an obscure situation as assistant or 
clerk to a stationer more favourably placed. 

It was as the self-appointed procurer and owner of an un- 
printed manuscript — a recognised role for novices to fill in the book 
trade of the period — that Thorpe made his first distinguishable 
appearance on the stage of literary history. In 1600 there 
fell into his hands in an unexplained manner a written copy of 
His owner- Marlowc's unprinted translation of the first book of 
ship of the 'Lucau.' Thorpe confided his good fortune to Edward 

manuscript , . . i-i i • ir ' 

of Marlowe's Blount, then a stationers assistant like himseli, Out 
'Lucan. ^^^j^ better prospects. Blount had already achieved 

a modest success in the same capacity of procurer or picker- 
up of neglected 'copy.' ^ In 1598 he became proprietor of 
Marlowe's unfinished and unpublished 'Hero and Leander,' 

The details of his career are drawn from Mr. Arber's Transcript of the Registers 
of the Stationers' Company. 

" Arber, ii. 124. 3 lb. {{. 713. 

4 A younger brother, Richard, was apprenticed to a stationer, Mnrtin Ensor, for 
seven years from August 24, 1596. but he disappeared before gaining the freedom of 
the company, either dying young or seeking another occupation (cf. Arber's Tran- 
script, ii. 213). 

5 Cf. Bibliographica, i. 474-9S, where I have given an account of Blount's pro- 
fessional career in a paper called ' An Elizabethan Bookseller.' 



410 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

and found among better-equipped friends in the trade both 
a printer and a publisher for his treasure-trove. Blount 
good-naturedly interested himself in Thorpe's 'find,' and it 
was through Blount's good offices that Peter Short undertook 
to print Thorpe's m.anuscript of Marlowe's 'Lucan,' and 
Walter Burre agreed to sell it at his shop in St. Paul's 
Churchyard. As owner of the manuscript Thorpe exerted the 
right of choosing a patron for the venture and of supplying the 
His dedica- dedicatory epistle. The patron of his choice was 
tory address his friend Blount, and he made the dedication the 

to i/dward i-i r ^ ' 'ir 

Blount in vchicle oi his gratitude for the assistance he had 
^^°°' just received. The style of the dedication was 

somewhat bombastic, but Thorpe showed a literary sense when 
he designated Marlowe 'that pure elemental wit,' and a good 
deal of dry humour in offering to 'his kind and true friend' 
Blount 'some few instructions' whereby he might accom- 
modate himself to the unaccustomed role of patron.^ For the 
conventional type of patron Thorpe disavowed respect. He 
preferred to place himself under the protection of a friend in 
the trade whose good will had already stood him in good stead, 
and was capable of benefiting him hereafter. 

This venture laid the foundation of Thorpe's fortunes. Three 
years later he was able to place his own name on the title-page 
of two humbler literary prizes — each an insignificant pamphlet 
on current events.^ Thenceforth for a dozen years his name 
reappeared annually on one, two, or three volumes. After 1614 
his operations were few and far between, and they ceased 
altogether in 1624. He seems to have ended his days in 
poverty, and has been identified with the Thomas Thorpe who 

' Thorpe gives a sarcastic description of a typical patron, and amply attests the 
purely commercial relations ordinarily subsisting between dedicator and dedicatee. 
'When I bring you the book,' he advises Blount, 'take physic and keep state. As- 
sign me a time by your man to come again. . . . Censure scornfully enough and 
somewhat like a traveller. Commend nothing lest you discredit your (that which 
you would seem to have) judgment. . . . One special virtue in our patrons of these 
days I have promised myself you shall fit excellently, which is to give nothing.' Finally 
Thorpe, changing his tone, challenges his patron's love 'both in this and, I hope, 
many more succeeding offices.' 

' One gave an account of the East India Company's fleet; the other reported 
a speech delivered by Richard Martin, M.P., to James I at Stamford Hill during 
the royal progress to London. 



THOMAS THORPE AND 'MR. W. H.' 41 1 

was granted an alms-room in the hospital of Ewelme, Oxford- 
shire, on December 3, 1635.^ 

Thorpe was associated with the publication of twenty-nine 
volumes in all,^ including Marlowe's 'Lucan'; but in almost all 
his operations his personal energies were confined, as in his 
- initial enterprise, to procuring the manuscript. For 
of his a short period in 1608 he occupied a shop, The 

business. Tiger's Head, in St. Paul's Churchyard, and the fact 
was duly announced on the title-pages of three publications 
which he issued in that year.^ But his other undertakings were 
described on their title-pages as printed for him by one stationer 
and sold for him by another; and when any address found 
mention at all, it was the shopkeeper's address, and not his 
own. He never enjoyed in permanence the profits or dignity 
of printing his 'copy' at a press of his own, or selling books on 
premises of his own, and he can claim the distinction of having 
pursued in this homeless fashion the well-defined profession of 
procurer of manuscripts for a longer period than any other 
known member of the Stationers' Company. Though many 
others began their career in that capacity, all except Thorpe, 
as far as they can be traced, either developed into printers or 
booksellers, or, failing in that, betook themselves to other trades. 

Very few of his wares does Thorpe appear to have procured 
direct from the authors. It is true that between 1605 and 161 1 
there were issued under his auspices some eight volumes of 
genuine literary value, including, besides Shakespeare's 'Son- 
nets,' three plays by Chapman,* four works of Ben Jonson, and 



' Calendar of State Papers, Domestic Series, 1635, p. 527. 

2 Two bore his name on the title-page in 1603; one in 1604; two in 1605; two 
in 1606; two in 1607; three in 1608; one in 1609 {i.e. the Sonnets); three in 1610 
{i.e. Hisirio-mastix, or the Playwright, as well as Healey's translations); two in 
1611; one in 1612; three in 1613; two in 1614; two in 1616; one in 1618; and 
finally one in 1624. The last was a new edition of George Chapman's Conspiracie 
and Tragedie of Charles Duke of Byron, which Thorpe first published in 1608. 

3 They were Wits A. B.C. or a centurie of Epigrams (anon.), by R. West of Mag- 
dalen College, Oxford (a copy is in the Bodleian Library); Chapman's Byron, and 
Jonson's Masques of Blackness and Beauty. 

4 Chapman and Jonson were very voluminous authors, and their works were 
sought after by almost all the publishers of London, many of whom were successful 
in launching one or two with or without the author's sanction. Thorpe seems to 
have taken particular care with Jonson's books, but none of Jonson's works fell into 



412 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

Coryat's 'Odcombian Banquet.' But the taint of mysterious 
origin attached to most of his literary properties. He doubtless 
owed them to the exchange of a few pence or shillings with a 
scrivener's hireling; and the transactions was not one of which 
the author had cognisance. 

It is quite plain that no negotiation with the author preceded 
the formation of Thorpe's resolve to publish for the first time 
Shakespeare's 'Sonnets' in 1609. Had Shakespeare associated 
himself with the enterprise, the world would fortunately have 
been spared Thorpe's dedication to 'Mr. W. H.' 'T. T.'s' 
place would have been filled by 'W. S.' The whole transaction 
was in Thorpe's vein. Shakespeare's 'Sonnets' had been* 
Shake- already circulating in manuscript for eleven years; 

speare's only two had as yet been printed, and those were 

publishers' issued by the pirate publisher, William Jaggard, in 
hands. ^^le fraudulently christened volume, 'The Passionate 

Pilgrim, by William Shakespeare,' in 1599. Shakespeare, 
except in the case of his two narrative poems, showed utter 
indifference to all questions touching the publication of his 
works. Of the sixteen plays of his that were published in his 
lifetime, not one was printed with his sanction. He made no 
audible protest when seven contemptible dramas in which he 
had no hand were published with his name or initials on the 
title-page while his fame was at its height. With only one 
publisher of his time, Richard Field, his fellow-townsman, who 
was responsible for the issue of 'Venus' and 'Lucrece,' is it 
likely that he came into personal relations, and there is nothing 
to show that he maintained relations with Field after the pub- 
lication of 'Lucrece' in 1594. 

In fitting accord with the circumstance that the publication 
of the 'Sonnets' was a trajdesman's venture which ignored the 
author's feelings and rights, Thorpe in both the entry of the 
book in the 'Stationers' Registers' and on its title-page 

Thorpe's hands before 1605 or after 1608, a minute fraction of Jonson's literary 
life. It is significant that the author's dedication — the one certain mark of publica- 
tion with the author's sanction — appears in only one of the three plays by Chapman 
that Thorpe issued, viz. in Byron. One or two copies of Thorpe's impression of 
All Fools have a dedication by the author, but it is absent from most of them. No 
known copy of Thorpe's edition of Chapman's Gentleman Usher has any dedica- 
tion. 



THOMAS THORPE AND 'MR. W. H.' 413 

brusquely designated it ' Shakespeares Sonnets/ instead of 
following the more urbane collocation of words invariably- 
adopted by living authors, viz. 'Sonnets by William Shake- 
speare.' 

In framing the dedication Thorpe followed established 
precedent. Initials run riot over Elizabethan and Jacobean 
The use of books. Printers and publishers, authors and con- 
initials in tributors of prefatory commendations were all in the 

dedications ^ ■' i i • i 

of Eliza- habit of maskmg themselves behmd such symbols. 
Jacobean" Patrons figured under initials in dedications some- 
books, what less frequently than other sharers in the book's 
production. But the conditions determining the employment of 
initials in that relation were well defined. The employment of 
initials in a dedication was a recognised mark of a close friendship 
or intimacy between patron and dedicator. It was a sign that 
the patron's fame was limited to a small circle, and that the 
revelation of his full name was not a matter of interest to a wide 
public. Such are the dominant notes of almost all the extant 
dedications in which the patron is addressed by his initials. 
In 1598 Samuel Rowlands addressed the dedication of his 
'Betraying of Christ' to his 'deare affected friend Maister 
H. W., gentleman.' An edition of Robert Southwell's 'Short 
Rule of Life' which appeared in the same year bore a dedication 
addressed 'to my deare aEected friend M. [i.e. Mr.] D. S., 
gentleman.' The poet Richard Barnfield also in the same year 
dedicated the opening sonnet in his 'Poems in divers Humours' 
to his 'friend Maister R. L.' In 161 7 Dunstan Gale dedicated 
a poem, 'Pyramus and Thisbe,' to the 'worshipfull his verie 
friend D. [i.e. Dr.] B. H.' ' 

There was nothing exceptional in the words of greeting 
which Thorpe addressed to his patron 'Mr. W. H.' They 

' Many other instances of initials figuring in dedications under slightly different 
circumstances will occur to bibliographers, but all, on examination, point to the 
existence of a close intimacy between dedicator and dedicatee. R. S.'s [i.e. possibly 
Richard Stafford's] 'Epistle dedicatorie' before his Heraclitus (Oxford, 1609) was 
inscribed 'to his much honoured father S. F. S.' An Apologie for Women, or an 
Opposition to Mr. D. G. his assertion . . . hyW. H. of Ex. in Ox. (Oxford, 1609), 
was dedicated to 'the honourable and right vertuous ladie, the Ladie M. H.' This 
volume, published in the same year as Shakespeare's Sonnets, offers a pertinent 
example of the generous freedom with which initials were scattered over the pre- 
liminary pages of books of the day. 



414 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

followed a widely adopted formula. Dedications of the time 
usually consisted of two distinct parts. There was a dedicatory 
epistle, which might touch at any length, in either verse or 
prose, on the subject of the book and the writer's relations with 
his patron. But there was usually, in addition, a preliminary 
salutation confined to such a single sentence as Thorpe dis- 
Prequency played on the first page of his edition of Shake- 
of wishes for sDcare's 'Sonnets.' In that preliminary sentence the 

happiness ^ ^ , . . 

and'eter- dedicator habitually 'wisheth' his patron one or 
dedicatory more of such blessings as health, long life, happiness, 
greetings. g^j^^j eternity. 'Al perseverance with soules happi- 
ness' Thomas Powell 'wisheth' the Countess of Kildare on 
the first page of his 'Passionate Poet' in 1601. 'All happi- 
nes' is the greeting of Thomas Watson, the sonnetteer, to his 
patron, the Earl of Oxford, on the threshold of Watson's 'Pas- 
sionate Century of Love.' There is hardly a book published by 
Robert Greene between 1580 and 1592 that does not open with 
an adjuration before the dedicatory epistle in the form: 'To 

Robert Greene wisheth increase of honour with the 

full fruition of perfect felicity.' 

Thorpe in Shakespeare's 'Sonnets' left the salutation to stand 
alone, and omitted the supplement of a dedicatory epistle; 
but this, too, was not unusual. There exists an abundance 
of contemporary examples of the dedicatory salutation without 
the sequel of the dedicatory epistle. Edmund Spenser's 
dedication of the 'Faerie Queene' to Elizabeth consists 
solely of the salutation in the form of an assurance that the 
writer 'consecrates these his labours to live with the eter- 
nitie of her fame.' Michael Drayton both in his 'Idea, 
The Shepheard's Garland' (1593), and in his 'Poemes Lyrick 
and Pastorall' (1609), confined his address to his patron to a 
single sentence of salutation.^ Richard Brathwaite in 161 1 
exclusively saluted the patron of his 'Golden Fleece' with 'the 
continuance of God's temporall blessings in this life, with the 
crowne of immortalitie in the world to come; ' while in like 
manner he greeted the patron of his 'Sonnets and Madrigals' 

I In the volume of 1593 the words run: 'To the noble and valorous gentleman 
Master Robert Dudley, enriched with all vertues of the minde and worthy of all 
honorable desert. Your most affectionate and devoted Michael Drayton.' 



THOMAS THORPE AND 'MR. W. H.' 415 

in the same year with 'the prosperitie of times successe in this 
life, with the reward of eternitie in the world to come.' It is 
'happiness' and 'eternity,' or an equivalent paraphrase, that had 
the widest vogue among the good wishes with which the dedi- 
cator in the early years of the seventeenth century besought 
his patron's favour on the first page of his book. But 
Thorpe was too self-assertive to be a slavish imitator. His 
addiction to bombast and his ' elementary appreciation of 
literature recommended to him the practice of incorporating in 
his dedicatory salutation some high-sounding embellishr^ients 
of the accepted formula suggested by his author's writing.' In 
his dedication of the 'Sonnets' to 'Mr. W. H.' he grafted on 
the common formula a reference to the immortality which 
Shakespeare, after the habit of contemporary sonnetteers, 
prophesied for his verse in the pages that succeeded. With 
characteristic magniloquence, Thorpe added the decorative 
and supererogatory phrase, 'promised by our ever-living 
poet,' to the conventional dedicatory wish for his patron's 'all 
happiness' and 'eternitie.' ^ 

Thorpe, as far as is known, penned only one dedication 

p.^g before that to Shakespeare's 'Sonnets.' His dedi- 

dedications catory experience was previously limited to the in- 

^ °^^^* scription of Marlowe's 'Lucan' in 1600 to Blount, his 

friend in the trade. Three dedications by Thorpe survive 

' In 1610, in dedicating St. Augustine, Of the Citie of God to the Earl of Pem- 
broke, Tholrpe awkwardly describes the subject-matter as 'a desired citie sure in 
heaven,' and assigns to 'St. Augustine and his commentator Vives' a 'savour of 
the secular.' In the same year, in dedicating Epictetus his Manuall to Florio, he 
bombastically pronounces the book to be 'the hand to philosophy; the instrument of 
instruments; as Nature greatest in the least; as Homer's Z/za^ in a nutshell; in lesse 
compasse more cunning.' For other examples of Thorpe's pretentious, half -educated 
and ungrammatical style, see p. 419, note 2. 

^ The suggestion is often made that the only parallel to Thorpe's salutation of 
happiness is met with in George Wither 's Abttses Whipt and Stript (London, 1613). 
There the dedicatory epistle is prefaced by the ironical salutation 'To himselfe G. W. 
wisheth all happinesse.' It is further asserted that Wither had probably Thorpe's 
dedication to 'Mr. W. H.' in view when he wrote that satirical sentence. It will 
now be recognised that Wither aimed very gently at no identifiable book, but at a 
feature common to scores of books. Since his Abuses was printed by George Eld 
and sold by Francis Burton — the printer and publisher concerned in 1606 in the 
publication of 'W. H.'s' Southwell manuscript — there is a bare chance that Wither 
had in mind 'W. H.'s' greeting of Mathew Saunders, but fifty recently published 
volumes would have supplied him with similar hints. 



4l6 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

of a date subsequent to the issue of the 'Sonnets.' One of 
these is addressed to John Florio, and the other two to the 
Earl of Pembroke.^ But these three dedications all prefaced 
volumes of translations by one John Healey, whose manuscripts 
had become Thorpe's prey after the author had emigrated to 
Virginia, where he died shortly after landing. Thorpe chose, he 
tells us, Florio and the Earl of Pembroke as patrons of Healey's 
unprinted manuscripts because they had been patrons of Hea- 
ley before his expatriation and death. There is evidence to 
prove that in choosing a patron for the 'Sonnets,' and penning 
a dedication for the second time, he pursued the exact procedure 
that he had followed — deliberately and for reasons that he fully 
stated — in his first and only preceding dedicatory venture. He 
chose his patron from the circle of his trade associates, and 
it must have been because his patron was a personal friend 
that he addressed him by his initials, 'W. H.' 

Shakespeare's 'Sonnets' is not the only volume of the period 
in the introductory pages of which the initials 'W. H.' play a 

prominent part. In 1606 one who concealed him- 
signs dedi- Self under the same letters performed for ' A Foure- 
Southwell's fould Meditation ' (a collection of pious poems which 
poems in the Jesuit Robert Southwell left in manuscript at his 

death) the identical service that Thorpe performed 
for Marlowe's 'Lucan' in 1600, and for Shakespeare's 'Sonnets' 
in 1609. In 1606 Southwell's manuscript fell into the hands 
of this 'W. H.,' and he published it through the agency of the 
printer, George Eld, and of an insignificant bookseller, Francis 
Burton.^ 'W. H.,' in his capacity of owner, supplied the dedi- 
cation with his own pen under his initials. Of the Jesuit's newly 
recovered poems 'W. H.' wrote, 'Long have they Hen hidden 

* Thorpe dedicated to Florio Epictetus his Manuall, and Cebes his Table, out 
of Greek originall by lo. Healey, 1610. He dedicated to the Earl of Pembroke 
St. Augustine, Of the Citie of God. . . . Englished by I. H., 1610, and a second 
edition of Healey's Epictetus, 1616. 

' Southwell's Foure-fould Meditation of 1606 is a book of excessive rarity, only 
one complete printed copy having been met vs^ith in our time. A fragment of the 
only other printed copy known is now in the British Museum. The work was re- 
printed in 1895, chiefly from an early copy in manuscript, by Mr. Charles Edmonds, 
the accomplished bibliographer, who in a letter to the Athenaum on November i, 
1873, suggested for the first time the identity of 'W. H.,' the dedicator of Southwell's 
poem, with Thorpe's ' Mr. W. H.' 



THOMAS THORPE AND 'MR. W. H.' 417 

in obscuritie, and haply had never seene the Hght, had not a 
meere accident conveyed them to my hands. But, having 
seriously perused them, loath I v^^as that any who are religiously 
affected, should be deprived of so great a comfort, as the due 
consideration thereof may bring unto them.' 'W. H.' chose as 
patron of his venture one Mathew Saunders, Esq., and to the 
dedicatory epistle prefixed a conventional salutation wishing 
Saunders long life and prosperity. The greeting was printed in 
large and bold type thus: 

To the Right Worfhipfull and 

Vertuous Gentleman, Mathew 

Saunders, Efquire. 

W.H. wifheth, with long life, a profperous 

achieuement of his good defires. 

There follows in small type, regularly printed across the page, 
a dedicatory letter — the frequent sequel of the dedicatory salu- 
tation — in which the writer, 'W. H.,' commends the religious 
temper of 'these meditations' and deprecates the coldness and 
sterility of his own 'conceits.' The dedicator signs himself at 
the bottom of the page 'Your Worships unfained affectionate, 
W. H.' ^ 

The two books — Southwell's 'Foure-fould Meditation' of 
1606, and Shakespeare's 'Sonnets' of 1609 — have more in 
common than the appearance on the preliminary pages of the 
initials 'W. H.' in a prominent place, and of the common form 
of dedicatory salutation. Both volumes, it was announced on 
the title-pages, came from the same press — the press of George 

» A manuscript volume at Oscott College contains a contemporary copy of 
those poems by Southwell which 'unfained affectionate W. H.' first gave to the print- 
ing press. The owner of the Oscott volume, Peter Mowle or Moulde (as he indif- 
ferently spells his name), entered on the first page of the manuscript in his own hand- 
writing an 'epistel dedicatorie' which he confined to the conventional greeting of 
happiness here and hereafter. The words ran: 'To the, right worshipfull Mr. 
Thomas Knevett Esquire, Peter Mowle wisheth the perpetuytie of true felysitie, the 
health of bodie and soule with continwance of worshipp in this worlde, And after 
Death the participation of Heavenlie happiness dewringe all worldes for ever.' 
2E 



41 8 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

Eld. Eld for many years co-operated with Thorpe in business. 
In 1605 he printed for Thorpe Ben Jonson's 'Sejanus,' and in 
each of the years 1607, 1608, 1609, and 1610 at least one of his 
ventures was pubhcly declared to be a specimen of Eld's 
typography. Many of Thorpe's books came forth without any 
mention of the printer; but Eld's name figures more frequently 
upo*n them than that of any other printer. Between 1605 and 
1609 it is Hkely that Eld printed all Thorpe's 'copy' as matter 
of course and that he was in constant relations with him. 

There is little doubt that the 'W. H.' of the Southwell 
volume was Mr. William Hall, who, when he procured that 
'W H ' and i^^ii^script for publication, was an humble auxiliary 
Mr, William in the publishing army. Hall flits rapidly across the 
stage of literary history. He served an apprentice- 
ship to the printer and stationer John Allde from 1577 to 1584, 
and was admitted to the freedom of the Stationers' Company in 
the latter year. For the long period of twenty-two years after 
his release from his indentures he was connected with the trade 
in a dependent capacity, doubtless as assistant to a master- 
stationer. When in 1606 the manuscript of Southwell's poems 
was conveyed to his hands and he adopted the recognised role 
of procurer of their pubHcation, he had not set up in business 
for himself. It was only later in the same year (1606) that he 
obtained the license of the Stationers' Company to inaugurate 
a press in his own name, and two years passed before he began 
business. In 1608 he obtained for publication a theological 
manuscript which appeared next year with his name on the 
title-page for the first time. This volume constituted the earhest 
credential of his independence. It entitled him to the prefix 
'Mr.' in all social relations. Between 1609 and 1614 he printed 
some twenty volumes, most of them sermons and almost all 
devotional in tone. The most important of his secular under- 
taking was Guillim's far-famed 'Display of Heraldrie,' a folio 
issued in 1610. In 1612 Hall printed an account of the con- 
viction and execution of a noted pickpocket, John Selman, who 
had been arrested while professionally engaged in the Royal 
Chapel at Whitehall. On the title-page Hall gave his own name 
by his initials only. The book was described in bold type as 
'printed by W. H.' and as on sale at the shop of Thomas 



THOMAS THORPE AND * MR. W. H.' 419 

Archer in St. Paul's Churchyard. Hall was a careful printer 
with a healthy dread of misprints, but his business dwindled 
after 1613, and, soon disposing of it to one John Beale, he dis- 
appeared into private life. 

'W. H.' are no uncommon initials, and there is more interest 
attaching to the discovery of 'Mr. W. H.'s' position in life and 
his function in relation to the scheme of the publication of the 
* Sonnets' than in establishing his full name. But there is 
every probability that William Hall, the 'W. H.' of the 
Southwell dedication, was one and the same person with the 
'Mr. W. H.' of Thorpe's dedication of the 'Sonnets.' No other 
inhabitant of London was habitually known to mask himself 
under those letters. William Hall was the only man bearing 
those initials who there, is reason to suppose was on familiar 
terms with Thorpe.^ Both were engaged at much the same 
period in London in the same occupation of procuring manu- 
scripts for publication; both inscribed their literary treasure- 
trove in the common formula to patrons for whom they claimed 
no high rank or distinction, and both engaged the same printer 
to print their most valuable prize. 

No condition of the problem of the identity of Thorpe's 
friend 'Mr. W. H.' seems ignored by the adoption of the inter- 
pretation that he was the future master-printer 
begette?''^ William Hall. The objection that 'Mr. W. H.' could 
means 'only j^q^ have been Thorpe's friend in trade, because 

procurer. .... . . 

while wishing him all happiness and eternity Thorpe 
dubs him 'the onlie begetter of these insuing sonnets,' is not 
formidable. Thorpe rarely used words with much exactness.^ 

' A bookseller (not a printer), William Holmes, who was in business for himself 
between 1590 and 1615, was the only other member of the Stationers' Company bear- 
ing at the required dates the initials of 'W. H.' But he was ordinarily known. by 
his full name, and there is no indication that he had either professional or private 
relations with Thorpe. 

=» Most of his dedications are penned in a loose diction of pretentious bombast 
which it is difficult to interpret exactly. When dedicating in 1610 — the year after 
the issue of the Sonnets — Healey's Epictetus his Manuall 'to a true fauorer of for- 
ward spirits, Maister John Florio,' Thorpe writes of Epictetus's work: 'In all lan- 
guages, ages, by all persons high prized, imbraced, yea inbosomed. It filles not 
the hand with leaues, but fills ye head with lessons: nor would bee held in hand but 
had by harte to boote. He is more senceless than a stocke that hath no good sence 
of this stoick.' In the same year, when dedicating Healey's translation of St. Au- 
gustine's Citic of God to the Earl of Pembroke, Thorpe clumsily refers to Pembroke's 



420 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

It is obvious that he did not employ 'begetter' in the ordinary 
sense. ' Begetter/ when literally interpreted as applied to a 
literary work, means father, author, producer, and it cannot 
be seriously urged that Thorpe intended to describe 'Mr. W. H.' 
as the author of the 'Sonnets.' 'Begetter' has been used in 
the figurative sense of inspirer, and it is often assumed that by 
'onlie begetter' Thorpe meant 'sole inspirer,' and that by the 
use of those words he intended to hint at the close relations 
subsisting between 'W. H.' and Shakespeare in the dramatist's 
early life; but that interpretation presents numberless difficulties. 
It was contrary to Thorpe's aims in business to invest a dedica- 
tion with any cryptic significance, and thus mystify his customers. 
Moreover, his career and the circumstances under which he 
became the publisher of the 'Sonnets' confute the assumption 
that he was in such relations with Shakespeare or with Shake- 
speare's associates as would give him any knowledge of Shake- 
speare's early career that was not public property. All 
that Thorpe — the struggHng pirate-publisher, 'the well-wishing 
adventurer in setting forth' wares mysteriously come by — knew 
or probably cared to know of Shakespeare was that he was the 
most popular and honoured of the literary producers of the day. 
When Thorpe had the luck to acquire surreptitiously an un- 
printed manuscript by 'our ever-living poet,' it was not in the 
great man's circle of friends or patrons, to which hitherto he had 
had no access, that he was likely to seek his own patron. 
Elementary considerations of prudence impelled him to publish 
his treasure-trove with all expedition, and not disclose his design 
prematurely to one who might possibly take steps to hinder its 
fulfilment. But that Thorpe had no 'inspirer' of the 'Sonnets' 
in his mind when he addressed himself to 'Mr. W. H.' is 
finally proved by the circumstance that the only identifiable 
male 'inspirer' of the poems was the Earl of Southampton, to 
whom the initials 'W. H.' do not apply. 

Of the figurative meanings set in Elizabethan English on the 
word 'begetter,' that of 'inspirer' is by no means the only one 

patronage of Healey's earlier efforts in translation thus: 'He that against detraction 
beyond expectation, then found your sweete patronage in a matter of small moment 
without distrust or disturbance, in this work of more weight, as he approoued his 
more abilitie, so would not but expect your Honours more acceptance.* 



THOMAS THORPE AND *MR. W. H.' 42 1 

or the most common. 'Beget' was not infrequently employed 
in the attenuated sense of 'get,' 'procure,' or 'obtain,' a sense 
which is easily deducible from the original one of 'bring 
into being.' Hamlet, when addressing the players, bids them 
'in the very whirlwind of passion acquire and beget a tem- 
perance that may give it smoothness.' 'I have some cousins 
german at Court,' wrote Dekker in 1602, in his 'Satiro-Mastix,* 
' [that] shall beget you the reversion of the Master of the King's 
Revels.' 'Mr. W. H.,' whom Thorpe described as 'the onlie 
begetter of these insuing sonnets,' was in all probability the 
acquirer or procurer of the manuscript, who, figuratively speak- 
ing, brought the book into being either by first placing the 
manuscript in Thorpe's hands or by pointing out the means 
by which a copy might be acquired. To assign such signifi- 
cance to the word 'begetter' was entirely in Thorpe's vein.* 
Thorpe described his role in the piratical enterprise of the 
'Sonnets' as that of 'the well-wishing adventurer in setting 
forth,' i.e. the hopeful speculator in the scheme. 'Mr. W. H.' 
doubtless played the almost equally important part — one as 
well known then as now in commercial operations — of the 
'vendor' of the property to be exploited. 

' This is the sense allotted to the word in the great Variorum edition of 1821 
by Malone's disciple, James Boswell the younger, who, like his master, was a bib- 
liographical expert of the highest authority. For further evidence of the use of 
the word 'beget' in the sense of 'get,' 'gain,' or 'procure' in English of the sixteenth 
and sevenetenth centuries, see the present writer's communications to the AihencBum, 
February 24, 1900, and March 17, 1900. The fact that the eighteenth-century 
commentators — men like Malone and Steevens — - who were thoroughly well versed 
in the literary history of the sixteenth century, should have failed to recognise any 
connection between 'Mr. W. H.' and Shakespeare's personal history is in itself a very 
strong argument against the interpretation foisted on the dedication during the nine- 
teenth century by writers who have no pretensions to be reckoned the equals of Malone 
and Steevens as literary archaeologists. 



422 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 



VI 

'MR. WILLIAM HERBERT 

For nearly eighty years it has been very generally assumed 
that Shakespeare addressed the bulk of his sonnets to the 
^ . . ., young Earl of Pembroke. This theory ^wes its 

Origin of the -^ . , o • , , , i . , r- 

notion that origm to a speciously lucky guess which was first 
stands for disclosed to the public in 1832, and won for a time 
•Mr. William almost Universal acceptance.^ Thorpe's form of 
address was held to justify the mistaken inference 
that, whoever 'Mr. W. H.' may have been, he and no other was 
the hero of the alleged story of the 'Poems'; and the corner- 
stone of the Pembroke theory was the assumption that the 
letters 'Mr. W. H.' in the dedication did duty for the words 
'Mr. William Herbert,' by which name the (third) Earl of Pem- 
broke was represented as having been known in youth. The 

' James Boaden, a journalist and the biographer of Kemble and Mrs. Siddons, 
was the first to suggest the Pembroke theory in a letter to the Gentleman' s Magazine 
in 1832. A few months later Mr. James Heywood Bright wrote to the magazine 
claiming to have reached the same conclusion as early as 1819, although he had 
not published it. Boaden re-stated the Pembroke theory in a volume on Shake- 
speare' s Sonnets which he published in 1837. C. Armitage Brown adopted it in 1838 
in his Shakespeare's Autobiographical Poems. The Rev. Joseph Hunter, who ac- 
cepted the theory without qualification, significantly pointed out in his New Illus- 
trations of Shakespeare in 1845 (ii. 346) that it had not occurred to any of the writers 
in the great Variorum editions of Shakespeare, nor to critics so acute in matters of 
literary history as Malone or George Chalmers. The theory is treated as proved 
fact in many recent literary manuals. Of its supporters at the date of writing the 
most ardent is Mr. Thomas Tyler, who published an edition of the Sonnets in 1890, 
and there further advanced a claim to identify the 'dark lady' of the Sonnets with 
Mary Fitton, a lady of the Court and the Earl of Pembroke's mistress. Mr. Tyler 
endeavoured to substantiate both the Pembroke and the Fitton theories, by merely 
repeating his original arguments, in a pamphlet which appeared in April 1899 under 
the title of The Herbert-Fitton Theory: a Reply [i.e. to criticisms of the theories 
by Lady Newdegate and by myself]. The Pembroke theory, whose adherents have 
dwindled of late, will henceforth be relegated, T trust, to the category of popular 
delusions. 



*MR. WILLIAM HERBERT^ 423 

originators of the theory claimed to discover in the Earl of 
Pembroke the only young man of rank and wealth to whom the 
initials 'W. H.' applied at the needful dates. In thus inter- 
preting the initials, the Pembroke theorists made a blunder 
that proves on examination to be fatal to their whole con- 
tention. 

The nobleman under consideration succeeded to the earl- 
dom of Pembroke on his father's death on January 19, 1601 
The Earl of (^-S-)) when he was twenty years and nine months 
Pembroke old, and from that date it is unquestioned that he 
as^LorxlHe^- was always known by his lawful title. But it has 
bert in youth. ^^^^ overlooked that the designation 'Mr. William 
Herbert,' for which the initials 'Mr. W. H ' have been long 
held to stand, could never in the mind of Thomas Thorpe or 
any other contemporary have denominated the earl at any 
moment of his career. When he came into the world on 
April 9, 1580, his father had been (the second) Earl of Pem- 
broke for ten years, and he, as the eldest son, was from the 
hour of his birth known in all relations of life — even in the 
baptismal entry in the parish register — by the title of Lord 
Herbert, and by no other. During the lifetime of his father 
and his own minority several references were made to him in 
the extant correspondence of friends of varying degrees of 
intimacy. He is called by them, without exception, 'my Lord 
Herbert,' 'the Lord Herbert,' or 'Lord Herbert.' ^ It is true 
that as the eldest son of an earl he held the title by courtesy, 
but for all practical purposes it was as well recognised in com- 
mon speech as if he had been a peer in his own right. No one 
nowadays would address in current parlance, or entertain the con- 
ception of. Viscount Cranborne, the heir of the present Marquis of 
Salisbury, as 'Mr. R. C or 'Mr. Robert Cecil.' It is no more 
legitimate to assert that it would have occurred to an Eliza- 
bethan — least of all to a personal acquaintance or to a publisher 

I Cf. Sydney Papers, ed. Collins, i. 353. 'My Lord (of Pembroke) himself with 
my Lord Harberl (is) come up to see the Queen' (Rowland Whyte to Sir Robert 
Sydney, October 8, 1591), and again p. 361 (November 16, 1595); and p. 372 (De- 
cember s, 159s). John Chamberlain wrote to Sir Dudley Carleton on August i, 
1599, ' Young Lord Harbert, Sir Henrie Carie, and Sir William Woodhouse, are all 
in election at Court, who shall set the best legge foremost.' Chamberlain's Letters 
(Camden Soc), p. 57. 



424 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

who stood toward his patron in the relation of a personal 
dependent — to describe 'young Lord Herbert,' of EHzabeth's 
reign, as 'Mr. WiUiam Herbert/ A lawyer, who in the way of 
business might have to mention the young lord's name in a 
legal document, would have entered it as 'William Herbert, 
commonly called Lord Herbert.' The appellation 'Mr.' was 
not used loosely then as now, but indicated a precise social 
grade. Thorpe's employment of the prefix 'Mr.' without quali- 
fication is in itself fatal to the pretension that any lord, whether 
by right or courtesy, was intended.^ 

Proof is at hand to establish that Thorpe was under no 
misapprehension as to the proper appellation of the Earl of 
Thorpe's Pembroke, and was incapable of venturing^ on the 
mode of meaningless misnomer of 'Mr. W. H.' Insignificant 

the Earl of publisher though he was, and sceptical as he was of 
Pembroke. ^^^ merits of noble patrons, he was not proof against 
the temptation, when an opportunity was directly offered him, of 
adorning the prefatory pages of a publication with the name 
of a nobleman, who enjoyed the high official station, the literary 
culture, and the social influence of the third Earl of Pembroke. 
In 1610 — a year after he published the 'Sonnets' — there came 
into his hands the manuscripts of John Healey, that humble 
literary aspirant who had a few months before emigrated to 
Virginia, and had, it would seem, died there. Healey, before 
leaving England, had secured through the good offices of John 
Florio (a man of influence in both fashionable and literary circles) 
the patronage of the Earl of Pembroke for a translation of 

' Thomas Sackville, the author of the Induction to The Mirror for Magistrates 
and other poetical pieces, and part author of Gorboduc, was born plain 'Thomas 
Sackville,' and was ordinarily addressed in youth as 'Mr. Sackville.' He wrote all 
his literary work while he bore that and no other designation. He subsequently 
abandoned literature for politics, and was knighted and created Lord Buckhurst. 
Very late in life, in 1604 — - at the age of sixty-eight — he became Earl of Dorset. A 
few of his youthful effusions, which bore his early signature, ' M. [i.e. Mr.] Sackville,' 
were reprinted with that signature unaltered in an encyclopaedic anthology, England's 
Parnassus, which was published, wholly independently of him, in 1600, after he had 
become Baron Buckhurst. About the same date he was similarly designated Thomas 
or Mr. Sackville in a reprint, unauthorised by him, of his Induction to The Mirror 
for Magistrates, which was in the original text ascribed, with perfect correctness, 
to Thomas or Mr. Sackville. There is clearly no sort of parallel (as has been urged) 
between such an explicable, and not unwarrantable, metachronism and the misnaming 
of the Earl of Pembroke 'Mr. W. H.' As might be anticipated, persistent research 
affords no parallel for the latter irregularity. 



«MR. WILLIAM HERBERT' 425 

Bishop HS,irs fanciful satire, 'Mundus alter et idem.' Calling 
his book 'The Discoverie of a New World,' Healey had prefixed 
to it, in 1609, an epistle inscribed in garish terms of flattery to 
the 'Truest mirrour of truest honor, William Earl of Pembroke.' ^ 
When Thorpe subsequently made up his mind to publish, on 
his own account, other translations by the same hand, he found 
it desirable to seek the same patron. Accordingly, in 1610, he 
prefixed in his own name, to an edition of Healey's translation 
of St. Augustine's 'Citie of God,' a dedicator}; address 'to the 
honorablest patron of the Muses and good mindes. Lord William, 
Earle of Pembroke, Knight of the Honourable Order (of the 
Garter), &c.' In involved sentences Thorpe tells the 'right 
gracious and gracefule Lord' how the author left the work at 
death to be a 'testimonie of gratitude, observance, and heart's 
honor to your honour.' 'Wherefore,' he explains, 'his legacie, 
laide at your Honour's feete, is rather here dehvered to your 
Honour's humbly thrise-kissed hands by his poore delegate. 
Your Lordship's true devoted, Th. Th.' 

Again, in 161 6, when Thorpe procured the issue of a second 
edition of another of Healey's translations, 'Epictetus Manuall. 
Cebes Table. Theoprastus Characters,' he supplied more con- 
spicuous evidence of the servility with which he deemed it 
incumbent on him to approach a potent patron. As this address 
by Thorpe to Pembroke is difficult of access, I give it in 
extenso : 
'To the Right Honourable, William Earle of Pembroke, Lord 

Chamberlaine to His Majestic, one of his most honorable Privie 

Counsell, and Knight of the most noble order of the Garter, &c. 

' Right Honorable. — It may worthily seeme strange unto 
your Lordship, out of what frenzy one of my meanenesse hath 
presumed to commit this Sacriledge, in the straightnesse of 
your Lordship's leisure, to present a peece, for matter and 
model so unworthy, and in this scribbling age, wherein great 
persons are so pestered dayly with Dedications. All I can 
alledge in extenuation of so many incongruities, is the bequest 
of a deceased Man; who (in his lifetime) having offered some 

» An examination of a copy of the book in the Bodleian — none is in the British 
Museum — shows that the dedication is signed J. H., and not, as Mr. Fleay infers, 
by Thorpe. Thorpe had no concern in this volume. 



426 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

translations of his unto your Lordship, ever wisht if these 
ensuing were published they might onely bee addressed unto 
your Lordship, as the last Testimony of his dutifull affection (to 
use his own termes) The true and reall upholder of Learned 
endeavors. This, therefore, beeing left unto mee, as a Legacie 
unto your Lordship (pardon my presumption, great Lord, from 
so meane a man to so great a person) I could not without some 
impiety present it to any other; such a sad priviledge have the 
bequests of the dead, and so obligatory they are, more than the 
requests of the living. In the hope of this honourable accep- 
tance I will ever rest, 

'Your lordship's humble devoted, 

'T. Th.' 

With such obeisances did publishers then habitually creep 
into the presence of the nobility. In fact, the law which 
rigorously maintained the privileges of peers left them no 
option. The alleged erroneous form of address in the dedica- 
tion of Shakespeare's 'Sonnets' — 'Mr. W. H.' for Lord Herbert 
or the Earl of Pembroke — would have amounted to the offence 
of defamation. And for that misdemeanour the Star Chamber, 
always active in protecting the dignity of peers, would have 
promptly called Thorpe to account.^ 

Of the Earl of Pembroke, and of his brother the Earl of 
Montgomery, it was stated a few years later, 'from just obser- 
vation,' on very pertinent authority, that 'no men came near 
their lordships [in their capacity of literary patrons], but with a 
kind of religious address.' These words figure in the prefatory 
epistle which two actor-friends of Shakespeare addressed to the 
two earls in the posthumously issued First Folio of the 
dramatist's works. Thorpe's 'kind of religious address' on 
seeking Lord Pembroke's patronage for Healey's books was 
somewhat more unctuous than was customary or needful. But 
of erring conspicuously in an opposite direction he may, without 
misgiving, be pronounced innocent. 

I On January 27, 1607-8, one Sir Henry Colte was indicted for slander in the Star 
Chamber for addressing a peer, Lord Morley, as 'goodman Morley.' A technical 
defect — the omission of the precise date of the alleged offence — in the bill of indict- 
ment led to a dismissal of the cause. See Les Reporles del Cases in Camera Stellata, 
1503 to 1609, edited from the manuscript of Henry Hawarde by W. P. Baildon, 
F.S.A. (privately printed for Alfred Morrison), p. 348. 



SHAKESPEARE AND THE EARL OF PEMBROKE 427 



VII 

SHAKESPEARE AND THE EARL OF 
PEMBROKE 

With the disposal of the allegation that 'Mr. W. H. repre- 
sented the Earl of Pembroke's youthful name, the whole theory 
of that earl's identity with Shakespeare's friend collapses. 
Outside Thorpe's dedicatory words, only two scraps of evidence 
with any title to consideration have been adduced to show that 
Shakespeare was at any time or in any way associated with 
Pembroke. 

In the late autumn of 1603 James I and his Court were 
installed at the Earl of Pembroke's house at Wilton for a period 
g, , of two months, owing to the prevalence of the plague 

with the in London. By order of the officers of the royal 

company household, the King's company of players, of which 
at Wilton Shakespeare was a member, gave a performance 
before the King at Wilton House on December 2. 
The actors travelled from Mortlake for the purpose, and were 
paid in the ordinary manner by the treasurer of the royal house- 
hold out of the public funds. There is no positive evidence that 
Shakespeare attended at Wilton with the company, but assum- 
ing, as is probable, that he did, the Earl of Pembroke can be 
held no more responsible for his presence than for his repeated 
presence under the same conditions at Whitehall. The visit of 
the King's players to Wilton in 1603 has no bearing on the Earl 
of Pembroke's alleged relations with Shakespeare.^ 

' See pp. 240-1. A tradition has lately sprung up at Wilton to the effect that 
a letter once existed there in which the Countess of Pembroke bade her son the earl 
while he was in attendance on James I at Salisbury bring the King to Wilton to 
witness a performance of ^^ You Like It. The countess is said to have added, 
'We have the man Shakespeare with us.' No tangible evidence of the existence of 
the letter is forthcoming, and its tenor stamps it, if it exists, as an ignorant inven- 
tion. The circumstances under which both King and players visited Wilton in 
1603 are completely misrepresented. The Court temporarily occupied Wilton 



428 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

The second instance of the association in the seventeenth 
century of Shakespeare's name with Pembroke's tells wholly 
The dedica- ^g^-i^^st the conjectured intimacy. Seven years 
tion of the after the dramatist's death, two of his friends and 
fellow-actors prepared the collective edition of 
his plays known as the First Folio, and they dedicated the 
volume, in the conventional language of eulogy, 'To the most 
noble and incomparable paire of brethren, William Earl oi 
Pembroke, &c., Lord Chamberlaine to the King's most excel- 
lent Majesty, and Philip, Earl of Montgomery, &c., Gentleman 
of His Majesties Bedchamber. Both Knights of the most 
Noble Order of the Garter and our singular good Lords.' 

The choice of such patrons, whom, as the dedication inti- 
mated, 'no one came near but with a kind of religious address,' 
proves no private sort of friendship between them and the dead 
author. To the two earls in partnership books of literary pre- 
tension were habitually dedicated at the period.^ Moreover, 
the third Earl of Pembroke was Lord Chamberlain in 1623, 
and exercised supreme authority in theatrical affairs. That his 
patronage should be sought for a collective edition of the works 
of the acknowledged master of the contemporary stage was nat- 
ural. It is only surprising that the editors should have yielded 
to the vogue of soliciting the patronage of the Lord Chamber- 
lain's brother in conjunction with the Lord Chamberlain. 

The sole passage in the editors' dedication that can be held 

House, and Shakespeare and his comrades were ordered by the officers of the royal 
household to give a performance there in the same way as they would have been 
summoned to play before the King had he been at Whitehall. It is hardly necessary 
to add that the Countess of Pembroke's mode of referring to literary men is well 
known: she treated them on terms of equality, and could not in any aberration of 
mind or temper have referred to Shakespeare as 'the man Shakespeare.' Similarly, 
the present Earl of Pembroke purchased of a London picture-dealer in 1897 what 
purported to be a portrait of the third Earl of Pembroke, and on the back was pasted 
a paper, that was represented to date from the seventeenth century, containing some 
lines from Shakespeare's Sonnet Ixxxi. (9-14), subscribed with the words 'Shake- 
speare unto the Earl of Pembroke, 1603,' The ink and handwriting are quite modern, 
and hardly make pretence to be of old date in the eyes of any one accustomed to 
study manuscripts. On May 5, 1898, an expert examination was made of the por- 
trait and the inscription, on the invitation of the present earl, and the inscription wag 
imanimously rejected. 

^ Cf. Ducci's Ars Aulica or The Courtier's Arte, 1607; Stephens's A World of 
Wonders, 1607; and Gerardo The Unfortunate Spaniard, Leonard Digges's trans- 
lation from the Spanish, 1622. 



SHAKESPEARE AND THE EARL OF PEMBROKE 429 

to bear on the question of Shakespeare's alleged intimacy with 
Pembroke is to be found in their remarks: 'But since your 
lordships have beene pleas' d to thinke these trifles something, 
heretofore; and have prosequuted both them, and their Authour 
living, with so much favour: we hope that (they outliving him, 
and he not having the fate, common with some, to be exequutor 
to his owne writings) you will use the like indulgence toward them 
you have done unto their parent. There is a great difference, 
whether any Booke choose his Patrones, or find them: This 
hath done both. For, so much were your lordships' likings of 
the severall parts, when they were acted, as, before they were 
published, the Volume ask'd to be yours.' There is nothing 
whatever in these sentences that does more than justify 
the inference that the brothers shared the enthusiastic esteem 
which James I and all the noblemen of his Court extended 
to Shakespeare and his plays in the dramatist's lifetime. Apart 
from his work as a dramatist, Shakespeare, in his capacity 
of one of 'the King's servants' or company of players, was 
personally known to all the officers of the royal household 
who collectively controlled theatrical representations at Court. 
Throughout James I's reign his plays were repeatedly performed 
in the royal presence, and when the dedicators of the First 
Folio, at the conclusion of their address to Lords Pembroke 
and Montgomery, describe the dramatist's works as 'these 
remaines of your Servant Shakespeare,' they make it quite 
plain that it was in the capacity of 'King's servant' or player 
that they knew him to have been the object of their noble 
patrons' favour. 

The 'Sonnets' offer no internal indication that the Earl of 
Pembroke and Shakespeare ever saw each othgr. Nothing at 
all is deducible from the vague parallelisms that have been 
adduced between the earl's character and position in life and 
those with which the poet credited the youth of the 'Sonnets.' 
No sugges- It may be granted that both had a mother (Sonnet 
^Sorinlt*'^ iii), that both enjoyed wealth and rank, that both 
of the^ were regarded by admirers as cultivated, that both 

tky with ^^ were self-indulgent in their relations with women, 
Pembroke. g^j^(j[ |-}jg^j- both in early manhood were indisposed to 
marry, owing to habits of gallantry. Of one alleged point of 



430 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

resemblance there is no evidence. The lovehness assigned 
to Shakespeare's youth was not, as far as we can learn, defi- 
nitely set to Pembroke's account. Francis Davison, when 
dedicating his 'Poetical Rhapsody' to the earl in 1602 in a 
very eulogistic sonnet, makes a cautiously qualified reference 
to the attractiveness of his person in the lines: 

[His] outward shape, though it most lovely be, 
Doth in fair robes a fairer soul attire. 

The only portraits of him that survive represent him in middle 
age,^ and seem to confute the suggestion that he was 
reckoned handsome at any time of life; at most they confirm 
Anthony Wood's description of him as in person 'rather 
majestic than elegant.' But the point is not one of moment, 
and the argument neither gains nor loses, if we allow that 
Pembroke may, at any rate in the sight of a poetical panegyrist, 
have at one period reflected, like Shakespeare's youth, 'the 
lovely April of his mother's prime.' 

But when we have reckoned up the traits that can, on 
any showing, be admitted to be common to both Pembroke and 
Shakespeare's alleged friend, they all prove to be equally 
indistinctive. All could be matched without difiiculty in a score 
of youthful noblemen and gentlemen of Elizabeth's Court. 
Direct external evidence of Shakespeare's friendly intercourse 
with one or other of Elizabeth's young courtiers must be produced 
before the 'Sonnets" general references to the youth's beauty 
and grace can render the remotest assistance in estabhshing his 
identity. 

Although it may be reckoned superfluous to adduce more 
arguments, negative or positive, against the theory that the 
Earl of Pembroke was a youthful friend of Shakespeare, it is 
worth noting that John Aubrey, the Wiltshire antiquary, and the 
biographer of most Englishmen of distinction of the sixteenth 
and seventeenth centuries, was zealously researching from 1650 
onwards into the careers alike of Shakespeare and of various 
members of the Earl of Pembroke's family — one of the chief 
in Wiltshire. Aubrey rescued from oblivion many anecdotes — 

' Cf. the engravings of Simon Pass, Stent, and Vandervoerst, after the portrait 
by Mytens. 



SHAKESPEARE AND THE EARL OF PEMBROKE 43 1 

scandalous and otherwise — both about the third Earl of Pem- 
Aubrey's broke and about Shakespeare. Of the former he wrote 
?n°rekSon ^^ ^^^ 'Natural History of Wiltshire' (ed. Britton, 
between 1847), recalling the earl's relations with Massinger 

and ^^^^^^^ and many other men of letters. Of Shakespeare, 
Pembroke. Aubrey narrated much lively gossip in his 'Lives 
of Eminent Persons.' But neither in his account of Pembroke 
nor in his account of Shakespeare does he give any hint that 
they were at any time or in any manner acquainted or associated 
with one another. Had close relations existed between them, 
it is impossible that all trace of them would have faded from the 
traditions that were current in Aubrey's time and were embodied 
in his writings.^ 

' It is unnecessary, after what has been said above (p. 127 n.), to consider seriously 
the suggestion that the 'dark lady' of the Sonnets was Mary Fitton, maid of honour 
to Queen Elizabeth. This frolicsome lady, who was at one time Pembroke's mis- 
tress and bore him a child, has been introduced into a discussion of the Sonnets only 
on the assumption that her lover, Pembroke, was the youth to whom the Sonnets 
were addressed. Lady Newdegate's recently published Gossip from a Muniment 
Room, wliich furnishes for the first time a connected biography of Pembroke's mis- 
tress, adequately disposes of any lingering hope that Shakespeare may have com- 
memorated her in his black-complexioned heroine. Lady Newdegate states that 
two well-preserved portraits of Mary Fitton remain at Arbury, and that they reveal 
a lady of fair complexion with brown hair and grey eyes. Family history places the 
authenticity of the portraits beyond doubt, and the endeavour lately made by Mr. 
Tyler, the chief champion of the hopeless Fitton theory, to dispute their authenticity 
is satisfactorily met by Mr. C. O. Bridgeman in an appendix to the second edition 
of Lady Newdegate's book. We also learn from Lady Newdegate's volume that 
Miss Fitton, during her girlhood, was pestered by the attentions of a middle-aged 
admirer, a married friend of the family. Sir William KnoUys. It has been lamely 
suggested' by some of the supporters of the Pembroke theory that Sir William Knollys 
was one of the persons named Will who are alleged to be noticed as competitors with 
Shakespeare and the supposititious 'Will Herbert' for 'the dark lady's' favours in 
the Sonnets (cxxxv, cxxxvi, and perhaps clxiii). But that is a shot wholly out of 
range. The wording of those Sonnets, when it is thoroughly tested, proves beyond 
reasonable doubt that the poet was the only lover named Will who is represented 
as courting the disdainful lady of the Sonnets, and that no reference whatever is made 
there to any other person of that Christian name. 



432 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 



VIII 

THE 'WILL' SONNETS 

No one has had the hardihood to assert that the text of the 
'Sonnets' gives internally any indication that the youth's name 
took the hapless form of 'William Herbert'; but many com- 
mentators argue that in three or four sonnets Shakespeare 
admits in so many words that the youth bore his own Christian 
name of Will, and even that the disdainful lady had among her 
admirers other gentlemen entitled in familiar intercourse to 
similar designation. These are fantastic assumptions which 
rest on a misconception of Shakespeare's phraseology and of 
the character of the conceits of the 'Sonnets/ and are solely 
attributable to the fanatical anxiety of the supporters of the 
Pembroke theory to extort, at all hazards, some sort of evi- 
dence in their favour from Shakespeare's text.^ 

In two sonnets (cxxxv-vi) — the most artificial and ' con- 
ceited' in the collection — the poet plays somewhat enig- 
matically on his Christian name of 'Will,' and a similar 
pun has been doubtfully detected in Sonnets cxxxiv and 
cxlvii. The groundwork of the pleasantry is the identity 
in form of the proper name with the common noun 'will,' 
^,. , ^, This word connoted in Elizabethan English a 

Elizabethan , . v* , . , 

meanings of generous variety of conceptions, of most of which 
^' ' it has long since been deprived. Then, as now, it 

was employed in the general psychological sense of volition; 
but it was more often specifically applied to two limited 
manifestations of the volition. It was the commonest of syno- 
nyms alike for 'self will' or 'stubbornness' — in which sense it 

* Professor Dowden (Sonnets, p. xxxv) writes: 'It appears from the punning 
sonnets (cxxxv and cxliii) that the Christian name of Shakspere's friend was the 
same as his own, Will,' and thence is deduced the argument that the friend could 
only be identical with one who, like William Earl of Pembroke, bore that Christian 
name. 



THE 'WILL' SONNETS 433 

still survives in 'wilful' — and for 'lust,' or 'sensual passion.' 
It also did occasional duty for its own diminutive 'wish,' for 
'caprice,' for 'good-will,' and for 'free consent' (as nowadays 
in 'willing,' or 'willingly'). 

Shakespeare constantly used 'v/ill' in all these significa- 
tions, lago recognised its general psychological value when 
„, , he said, 'Our bodies are our gardens, to the which 

speare's uses our wills are gardeners.' The conduct of the 'will' 

e wor . -g discussed after the manner of philosophy in 
'Troilus and Cressida' (11. ii. 51-68). In another of lago's 
sentences, 'Love is merely a lust of the blood and a permission 
of the will,' light is shed on the process by which the word came 
to be specifically applied to sensual desire. The last is a 
favourite sense with Shakespeare and his contemporaries. 
Angelo and Isabella, in 'Measure for Measure,' are at one in 
attributing their conflict to the former's 'will.' The self-indul- 
gent Bertram, in 'All's Well,' 'fleshes his "will" in the spoil 
of a gentlewoman's honour.' In 'Lear' (iv. vi. 279) Regan's 
heartless plot to seduce her brother-in-law is assigned to 'the 
undistinguished space' — the boundless range — 'of woman's 
will.' Similarly, Sir Philip Sidney apostrophised lust as 'thou 
web of will.' Thomas Lodge, in 'Phillis' (Sonnet xi), warns 
lovers of the ruin that menaces all who 'guide their course by 
will.' Nicholas Breton's fantastic romance of 1599, entitled 
'The Will of Wit, Wit's Will or Will's Wit, Chuse you 
whether,' is especially rich in like illustrations. Breton brings 
into marked prominence the antithesis which was familiar in 
his day between 'will' in its sensual meaning, and 'wit,' the 
Elizabethan synonym for reason or cognition. 'A song between 
Wit and Will' opens thus: 

Wit: What art thou, Will? Will: A babe of nature's brood. 
Wit: Who was thy sire? Will: Sweet Lust, as lovers say. 
Wit: Thy mother who? Will: Wild lusty wanton blood. 
Wit: When wast thou born? Will: In merry month of May. ' 
Wit: And where brought up ? Will: In school of little skill. 
Wit: What learned' st thou there? Will: Love is my lesson still. 

Of the use of the word in the sense of stubbornness or self-will, 
Roger Ascham gives a good instance in his 'Scholemaster,' 



434 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

(1570), where he recommends that such a vice in children as 
'will,' which he places in the category of lying, sloth, and 
disobedience, should be 'with sharp chastisement daily cut 
away.' ^ 'A woman will have her will' was, among Elizabethan 
wags, an exceptionally popular proverbial phrase, the point of 
which revolved about the equivocal meaning of the last word. 
The phrase supplied the title of 'a pleasant comedy,' by 
William Haughton, which — from 1597 onwards — held the stage 
for the unusually prolonged period of forty years. 'Women, 
because they cannot have their wills when they dye, they will 
have their wills while they live,' was a current witticism which 
the barrister Manningham deemed worthy of record in his 
'Diary' in 1602.^ In WilHam Goddard's 'Satiry call Dialogue' 
(1615?) 'Will' is personified as 'women's god,' and is intro- 
duced in female attire as presiding over a meeting of wives who 
are discontented with their husbands. 'Dame Will' opens the 
proceedings with an 'oration' addressed to her 'subjects' in 
which figure the lines: 

Know't I am Will,^ and will yield you releife. 
Be bold to speake, I am the wiue's delight, 
And euer was, and wilbe, th'tisbandes spight. 

It was not only in the ' Sonnets ' that Shakespeare — almost 
invariably with a glance at its sensual significance — rang the 
changes on this many-faced verbal token. In his earhest play, 
'Love's Labour's Lost' (11. i. 97-101), after the princess has 
tauntingly assured the King of Navarre that he will break his vow 

to avoid women's society, the king replies, 'Not for 
sp^are's the world, fair madam, by mj will' {i.e. willingly), 

puns on 'pjjg princess retorts, 'Why will [i.e. sensual desire] 

shall break it [i.e. the vow], will and nothing else.' In 
'Much Ado' (v. iv. 26 seq.), when Benedick, anxious to marry 
Beatrice, is asked by the lady's uncle, 'What's your will?' he 

» Ed. Mayor, p. 35. 

" Manningham's Diary, p. 92 ; cf . Barnabe Barnes's Odes Pastoral, sestine 2 : 
' But women will have their own wills, 
Alas, why then should I complain?' 
3 The text of this part of Goddard 's volume is printed in italics, but the word 
'Will,' which constantly recurs, is always distinguished by roman type. Goddard's 
very rare Dialogue was reprinted privately by Mr. John S. Farmer in 1897. 



THE 'WILL' SONNETS 435 

playfully lingers on the word in his answer. As for his 'will,' 
his 'will' is that the uncle's 'goodwill may stand with his' and 
Beatrice's 'will' — in other words that the uncle may consent to 
their union. Slender and Anne Page vary the tame sport when 
the former misinterprets the young lady's 'What is your will?' 
into an inquiry into the testamentary disposition of his property. 
To what depth of vapidity Shakespeare and contemporary 
punsters could sink is nowhere better illustrated than in the 
favour they bestowed on efforts to extract amusement from the 
parities and disparities of form and meaning subsisting between 
the words 'will' and 'wish/ the latter being in vernacular use 
as a diminutive of the former. Twice in the 'Two Gentlemen 
of Verona' (i. iii. 63 and iv. ii. 96) Shakespeare almost strives 
to invest with the flavour of epigram the unpretending announce- 
ment that one interlocutor's 'wish' is in harmony with another 
interlocutor's 'will.' 

It is in this vein of pleasantry — 'will' and 'wish' are 
identically contrasted in Sonnet cxxxv — that Shakespeare, to 
the confusion of modern readers, makes play with the word 
'will' in the ' Sonnets,' and especially in the two sonnets 
(cxxxv-vi) which alone speciously justify the delusion that the 
lady is courted by two, or more than two, lovers of the name of 
Will. 

One of the chief arguments advanced in favour of this 
interpretation is that the word 'will' in these sonnets is 
frequently italicised in the original edition. But this has 
little or no bearing on the argument. The corrector of the 
Arbitrary prcss recognised that Sonnets cxxxv and cxxxvi 
kr^use^of^' l^-^gely turned upon a simple pun between the 
italics by writer's name of 'Will' and the lady's 'will.' That 
andjacobean f^-Ct, and no Other, he indicated very roughly by 
printers. occasionally italicising the crucial word. Typo- 

graphy at the time followed no firmly fixed rules, and, although 
'will' figures in a more or less punning sense nineteen times in 
these sonnets, the printer bestowed on the word the distinc- 
tion of italics in only ten instances, and those were selected 
arbitrarily. The italics indicate the obvious equivoque, and 
indicate it imperfectly. That is the utmost that can be laid to 
their credit. They give no hint of the far more complicated 



436 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

punning that is alleged by those who believe that 'Will' is used 
now as the name of the writer, and now as that of one or more 
of the rival suitors. In each of the two remaining sonnets that 
have been forced into the service of the theory, Nos. cxxxiv 
and cxliii, 'will' occurs once only; it alone is italicised in the 
second sonnet in the original edition, and there, in my opinion, 
arbitrarily and without just cause.^ 

The general intention of the complex conceits of Sonnets 

cxxxv and cxxxvi becomes obvious whqn we bear in mind 

that in them Shakespeare exploits to the uttermost 

of Sonnets^ ^ the verbal coincidences which are inherent in the 

cxxxv-vi Elizabethan word 'will.' 'Will' is the Christian 

interpreted. . ,.,,,. i 

name of the enslaved writer; will is the sentiment 
with which the lady inspires her worshippers; and 'will' 
designates stubbornness as well as sensual desire. These two 
characteristics, according to the poet's reiterated testimony, are 
the distinguishing marks of the lady's disposition. He often 
dwells elsewhere on her 'proud heart' or 'foul pride,' and her 
sensuality or 'foul faults.' These are her 'wills,' and they 
make up her being. In crediting the lady with such a 
constitution Shakespeare was not recording any definite ob- 
servation or experience of his own, but was following, as was 
his custom, the conventional descriptions of the disdainful 
mistress common to all contemporary collections of sonnets. 
Barnabe Barnes asks the lady celebrated in his sonnets, from 
whose 'proud disdainfulness' he suffered, 

Why dost thou my delights delay, 

And with thy cross unkindness kills (sic) 

Mine heart, bound martyr to thy wills? 

Barnes answers his question in the next lines: 
But women will have their own wills, 
Since what she lists her heart fulfils.^ 

' Besides punning words, printers of poetry in the sixteenth and seventeenth 
centuries made an effort to italicise proper names, unfamiliar words, and words deemed 
worthy of special emphasis. But they did not strictly adhere to these rules, and, 
while they often failed to italicise the words that deserved italicisation, they freely 
italicised others that did not merit it. Capital initial letters were employed with like 
irregularity. Mr. Wyndham in his careful note on the typography of the quarto of 
1609 (pp. 259 seq.) suggests that Elizabethan printers were not erratic in their uses 
of italics or capital letters, but an examination of a very large number of Elizabethan 
and Jacobean books has brought me to an exactly opposite conclusion. 

» Barnes's Parihenophil in Arber's Garner, v. 440. 



THE 'WILL' SONNETS 437 

Similar passages abound in Elizabethan sonnets, but 
certain verbal similarities give good ground for regarding 
Shakespeare's 'will' sonnets as deliberate adaptations — doubt-, 
less with satiric purpose — of Barnes's stereotyped reflections 
on women's obduracy. The form and the constant repetition of 
the word 'will' in these two sonnets of Shakespeare also seem 
to imitate derisively the same rival's Sonnets Ixxii and Ixxiii 
in which Barnes puts the words 'grace' and 'graces' through 
much the same evolutions as Shakespeare puts the words 'will' 
and 'wills' in the Sonnets cxxxv and cxxxvi.^ 

Shakespeare's 'Sonnet' cxxxv runs: 

Whoever hath her wish, thou hast thy Will. 
And will to boot, and will in over- plus; 
More than enough am I that vex thee still, 
To thy sweet will making addition thus. 
Wilt thou, whose will is large and spacious,^ 
Not once vouchsafe to hide my will in thine? 
Shall will in others seem right gracious, 
And in my will no fair acceptance shine? 
The sea, all water, yet receives rain still. 
And in abundance addeth to his store; 
So thou, being rich in will, add to thy will 
One will of mine, to make thy large will more. 

Let no unkind no fair beseechers kill; 

Think all but one, and me in that one — Will. 

In the opening words, 'Whoever hath her wish,' the poet 
prepares the reader for the punning encounter by a slight 

variation on the current catch-phrase 'A woman will 
cS^v.* have her will.' At the next moment we are in the 

thick of the wordy fray. The lady has not only her 
lover named Will, but untold stores of 'will' — in the sense ahke 

' After quibbling in Sonnet Ixxii on the resemblance between the graces of his 
cruel mistress's face and the Graces of classical mythology, Barnes develops the 
topic in the next sonnet after this manner (the italics are my own) : 
'Why did rich Nature graces grant to thee, 
Since thou art such a niggard of thy grace ? 
O how can graces in thy body be ? 
Where neither they nor pity find a place ! . . . 
Grant me some ^race/ For thou with grace art wealthy 
And kindly may'st afford some gracious thing.' 
Cf. Lear, iv. vi. 270, 'O undistinguish'd space of woman's will'; i.e. 'O bound- 
less range of woman's lust.' 



438 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

of stubbornness and of lust — to which it seems supererogatory 
to make addition.^ To the lady's 'over-plus' of 'will' is 
punningly attributed her defiance of the 'will' of her suitor 
Will to enjoy her favours. At the same time 'will' in others 
proves to her 'right gracious,' ^ although in him it is unaccept- 
able. All this, the poet hazily argues, should be otherwise; for 
as the sea, although rich in water, does not refuse the falling 
rain, but freely adds it to its abundant store, so she, 'rich in 
will,' should accept her lover Will's 'will' and 'make her large 
will more.' The poet sums up his ambition in the final couplet: 

Let no unkind no fair beseechers kill; 

Think all but one, and me in that one — Will. 

This is as much as to say, 'Let not my mistress in her unkind- 
ness kill any of her fair-spoken adorers. Rather let her think 
all who beseech her favours incorporate in one alone of her 
lovers — and that one the writer whose name of "Will" is a 
synonym for the passions that dominate her.' The thought is 
wiredrawn to inanity, but the words make it perfectly clear that 
the poet was the only one of the lady's lovers — to the definite 
exclusion of all others — whose name justified the quibbling 
pretence of identity with the 'will' which controls her being. 

The same equivocating conceit of the poet Will's title to 
identity with the lady's 'will' in all senses is pursued in Sonnet 
cxxxvi. The sonnet opens: 

If thy soul check thee that I come so near, 
Swear to thy blind soul that I was thy will,' 
And will thy soul knows is admitted there. 

' Professor Dowden says 'will to boot' is a reference to the Christian name of 
Shakespeare's friend, 'William [? Mr. W. H.J' {Sonnets, p. 236); but in my view the 
poet, in the second line of the sonnet, only seeks emphasis by repetition in accord- 
ance with no uncommon practice of his. The line ' And will to boot, and will in 
over-plus,' is paralleled in its general form and intention in such lines of other sonnets 
as — 

'Kind is my love to-day, to-morrow kind' (cv. s). 
'Beyond all date, even to eternity' (cxxii. 4). 
'Who art as black as hell, as dark as night' (cxlvii. 14). 
In all these instances the second half of the line merely repeats the first half with 
a slight intensification. 

* Cf. Barnes's Sonnet Ixxiii: 

' All her looks gracious, yet no grace do bring 
To me, poor wretch ! Yet be the Graces there.' 
3 Shakespeare refers to the blindness, the 'sightless view'. of the soul, in Sonnet 
xxvii, and apostrophises the souP as the 'centre of his sinful earth' in Sonnet cxlvi. 



THE 'WILL' SONNETS 439 

Here Shakespeare adapts to his punning purpose the famihar 
philosophic commonplace respecting the soul's domination by- 
Sonnet 'will' or volition, which was more clearly expressed 
cxxxvi. lyj ]^jg contemporary, Sir John Davies, in the 
philosophic poem, 'Nosce Teipsum': 

Will holds the royal sceptre in the soul, ' 

And on the passions of the heart doth reign. 

Whether Shakespeare's lines be considered with their context 
or without it, the tenor of their thought and language positively 
refutes the commentators' notion that the 'will' admitted to the 
lady's soul is a rival lover named Will. The succeeding lines 
run: 

Thus far for love, my love-suit, sweet, fulfil.^ 

Will will fulfil the treasure of thy love; 

Ay, fill it full with wills, and my will one. 

In things of great receipt with ease we prove 

Among a number one is reckon' d none: 

Then in the number let me pass untold, 

Though in thy stores' account, I one must be; 

For nothing hold me, so it please thee hold 

That nothing me, a something sweet to thee. 

Here the poet Will continues to claim, in punning right of 
his Christian name, a place, however small and inconspicuous, 
among the 'wills,' the varied forms of will (i.e. lust, stubborn- 
ness, and willingness to accept others' attentions), which are the 
constituent elements of the lady's being. The plural 'wills' is 
twice used in identical sense by Barnabe Barnes in the lines 
already quoted: 

Mine heart, bound martyr to thy wills. 

But women will have their own wills. ^ 

Impulsively Shakespeare brings his fantastic pretension to a 
somewhat more practical issue in the concluding apostrophe: 

Make but my name thy love, and love that still, 
And then thou lovest me — - for my name is Will.^ 

' The use of the word 'fulfil' in this and the next line should be compared with 
Barnes's introduction of the word in a like context in the passage given above: 
'Since what she lists her heart fuljils.' 

' Mr. Tyler paraphrases these lines thus: 'You love your other admirer named 
Will. Love the name alone, and then you love me, for my name is Will,' p. 297. 
Professor Dowden, hardly more illuminating, says the lines mean: 'Love only my 
name (something less than loving myself), and then thou lovest me, for my name is 
Will, and I myself am all will, i.e. all desire.' 



440 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

That is equivalent to saying 'Make "will"' {i.e. that which is 
yourself) 'your love, and then you love me, because Will is my 
name.' The couplet proves even more convincingly than the 
one which clinches the preceding sonnet that none of the rivals 
whom the poet sought to displace in the lady's affections could 
by any chance have been, like himself, called Will. The writer 
could not appeal to a mistress to concentrate her love on his 
name of Will, because it was the emphatic sign of identity 
between her being and him, if that name were common to him 
and one or more rivals, and lacked exclusive reference to him- 
self. 

Loosely as Shakespeare's 'Sonnets' were constructed, the 
couplet at the conclusion of each poem invariably summarises 
the general intention of the preceding twelve lines. The con- 
cluding couplets of these two Sonnets cxxxv-vi, in which 
Shakespeare has been alleged to acknowledge a rival of his 
own name in his suit for a lady's favour, are consequently the 
touchstone by which the theory of 'more Wills than one' must 
be tested. As we have just seen, the situation is summarily 
embodied in the first couplet thus: 

Let no unkind no fair beseechers kill; 

Think all but one, and me in that one — Will. 

It is re-embodied in the second couplet thus: 

Make but my name thy love, and love that still. 
And then thou lovest me — for my name is Will. 

The whole significance of both couplets resides in the 
twice-repeated fact that one, and only one, of the lady's lovers 
is named Will, and that that one is the writer. To assume that 
the poet had a rival of his own name is to denude both couplets 
of all point. 'Will,' we have learned from the earlier lines of 
both sonnets, is the lady's ruling passion. Punning mock-logic 
brings the poet in either sonnet to the ultimate conclusion that 
one of her lovers may, above all others, reasonably claim her 
love on the ground that his name of Will is the name of her 
ruling passion. Thus his pretension to her affections rests, he 
punningly assures her, on a strictly logical basis. 



THE 'WILL'- SONNETS 44 1 

Unreasonable as any other interpretation of these sonnets 

(cxxxv-vi) seems to be, I believe it far more fatuous to 

seek in the single and isolated use of the word 

cx:^v! 'will' in each of the Sonnets cxxxiv and cxliii 

any confirmation of the theory of a rival suitor 

named Will. 

Sonnet cxxxiv runs: • 

So now I have confess' d that he is thine, 
And I myself am mortgaged to thy will.^ 
Myself I'll forfeit, so that other mine 
Thou wilt restore, to be my comfort still. 
But thou wilt not, nor he will not be free, 
For thou art covetous and he is kind. 
He learn' d but surety-like to write for me. 
Under that bond that him as fast doth bind. 
The statute of thy beauty thou wilt take, 
Thou usurer, that putt'st forth all to use, 
And sue a friend came debtor for my sake; 
So him I lose through my unkind abuse. 

Him have I lost; thou hast both him and me; 

He pays the whole, and yet am I not free. 

Here the poet describes himself as 'mortgaged to the lady's 
will' (i.e. to her personality, in which 'will,' in the double sense 
of stubbornness and sensual passion, is the strongest element). 
He deplores that the lady has captivated not merely himself, 
but also his friend, who made vicarious advances to her. 
Sonnet cxliii runs: 

Lo, as a careful housewife runs to catch 
One of her feathered creatures broke away. 
Sets down her babe, and makes all swift despatch 
In pursuit of the thing she would have stay; 
Whilst her neglected child holds her in chase, 
Cries to catch her whose busy care is bent 
To follow that which flies before her face, 
Not prizing her poor infant's discontent: 



' The word ' Will ' is not here italicised in the original edition of Shakespeare's 
Sonnets, and there is no ground whatever for detecting in it any sort of pun. The 
line resembles Barnes's line quoted above : 

' Mine heart, bound martyr to thy wills.' 



442 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

So runn'st thou after that which flies from thee, 

Whilst I, thy babe, chase thee afar behind; 

But if thou catch thy hope turn back to me, 

And play the mother's part, kiss me, be kind: 
So will I pray that thou mayst have thy will,^ 
If thou turn back and my loud crying still. 

In this sonnet — which presents a very clear-cut picture, al- 
though its mora), is somewhat equivocal — the poet represents 

the lady as a country housewife and himself as her 
Sormetaciiii. babe; while an acquaintance, who attracts the 

lady but is not attracted by her, is figured as a 
'feathered creature' in the housewife's poultry-yard. The fowl 
takes to flight ; the housewife sets down her infant and pursues 
'the thing.' The poet, believing apparently that he has little 
to fear from the harmless creature, lightly makes play with the 
current catch-phrase ('a woman will have her will'), and 
amiably wishes his mistress success in her chase, on condition 
that, having recaptured the truant bird, she turn back and treat 
him, her babe, with kindness. In praying that the lady 'may 
have her will' the poet is clearly appropriating the current catch- 
phrase, and no pun on a second suitor's name of 'Will' can 
be fairly wrested from the context. 

' Because 'will' by what is almost certainly a typographical accident is here 
printed Will in the first edition of the Sonnets, Professor Dowden is inclined to accept 
a reference to the supposititous friend Will, and to believe the poet to pray that the 
lady may have her Will, i.e. the friend 'Will [? W. H.].' This interpretation seems 
to introduce a needless complication. 



VOGUE OF THE ELIZABETHAN SONNET 443 



IX 

THE VOGUE OF THE ELIZABETHAN 
SONNET, 1591-1597 

The sonnetteering vogue, as I have already pointed out,^ 
reached its full height between 1591 and 1597, and when at its 
briskest in 1594 it drew Shakespeare into its current. An 
enumeration of volumes containing sonnet-sequences or de- 
tached sonnets that were in circulation during the period best 
illustrates the overwhelming force of the sonnetteering rage of 
those years, and, with that end in view, I give here a biblio- 
graphical account, with a few critical notes, of the chief efforts 
of Shakespeare's rival sonnetteers.^ 

The earliest collections of sonnets to be published in 
England were those by the Earl of Surrey and Sir Thomas 
Wyatt's and Wyatt, which first appeared in the publisher Tottel's 
Surrey's poetical misccllany called 'Songes and Sonnetes' in 

published 1557- This volume included sixteen sonnets by 
in 1557- ^ Surrey and twenty by Wyatt. Many of them were 
translated directly from Petrarch, and most of them treated 
conventionally of the torments of an unrequited love. Surrey 
included, however, three sonnets on the death of his friend 

't See p. 87 supra. A fuller account of the Elizabethan sonnet and its indebted- 
ness to foreign masters is to be found in the preface by the present writer to the two 
volumes of Elizabethan Sonnets (1904), in Messrs. Constable's revised edition of 
Arber's English Garner. 

' The word 'sonnet' was often irregularly used for 'song' or 'poem.' Neither 
Barnabe Googe's Eglogs, Epytlaphes, and Sonneltes, 1563, nor George Turbervile's 
Epitaphes, Epigrams, Songs and Sonets, 1567, contains a single fourteen-lined poem. 
The French word 'quatorzain' was the term almost as frequently applied as 'sonnet' 
to the fourteen-line stanza in regular sonnet form, which alone falls within my survey; 
cf. 'crazed quatorzains' in Thomas Nash's preface to his edition of Sidney's Asirophel 
and Stella, 1591; and Amours in Quatorzains on the title-page of the first edition of 
Drayton's Sonnets, 1594. 



444 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

Wyatt, and a fourth on the death of one Clere, a faithful 
follower. Tottel's volume was seven times reprinted by 1587. 
But no sustained endeavour was made to emulate the example 
of Surrey and Wyatt till Thomas Watson about 1580 circulated 
in manuscript his 'Booke of Passionate Sonnetes,' which 
he wrote for his patron, the Earl of Oxford. The volume 
was printed in 1582, under the title of ' 'EKATOMIIAGIA, 
Watson's ^^ Passionate Centurie of Loue. Divided into two 
'Centurieof parts: whereof the first expresseth the Authours 
■ °^^' ^^ ^' sufferance on Loue: the latter his long farewell to 
Loue and all his tyrannic. Composed by Thomas Watson, and 
published at the request of certaine Gentlemen his very frendes.' 
Watson's work, which he called ' a toy,' is a curious literary 
mosaic. He supplied to each poem a prose commentary, in 
which he not only admitted that every conceit was borrowed, 
but quoted chapter and verse for its origin from classical 
literature or from the work of French or Italian sonnetteers.^ 
Two regular quatorzains are prefixed, but to each of the 
'passions' there is appended a four-line stanza which gives 
each poem eighteen instead of the regular fourteen lines. 
Watson's efforts were so well received, however, that he applied 
himself to the composition of a second series of sonnets in strict 
metre. This collection, entitled 'The Tears of Fancie,' only 
circulated in manuscript in his hfetime.^ 

Meanwhile a greater poet, Sir Philip Sidney, who died in 
1586, had written and circulated among his friends a more 

ambitious collection of a hundred and eight sonnets. 
'Asmiphel Most of Sidney's sonnets were addressed by him under 
and Stella/ ^-j^g name of Astro phel to a beautiful woman poetically 

designated Stella. Sidney had in real life courted 
assiduously the favour of a married lady, Penelope, Lady Rich, 
and a few of the sonnets are commonly held to reflect the heat 
of passion which the genuine intrigue developed. But Petrarch, 
Ronsard, and Desportes inspired the majority of Sidney's 
efforts, and his addresses to abstractions like sleep, the moon, his 
muse, grief, or lust, are almost verbatim translations from the 
French. Sidney's sonnets were first published surreptitiously, 

' See p. 107 supra. 

• All Watson's sonnets are reprinted by Mr. Arber in Watson's Poems, 1895; 
'The Tears of Fancie' are in Eliz. Sonnets, ed. Lee, i. 137-164. 



VOGUE OF THE ELIZABETHAN SONNET 445 

under the title of 'Astrophel and Stella,' by a publishing adven- 
turer named Thomas Newman, and in his first issue Newman 
added an appendix of 'sundry other rare sonnets by divers 
noblemen and gentlemen.' Twenty-eight sonnets by Daniel 
were printed in the appendix anonymously and without the 
author's knowledge. Two other editions of Sidney's 'Astrophel 
and Stella' without the appendix were issued in the same year. 
Eight other of Sidney's sonnets, which still circulated only in 
manuscript, were first printed anonymously in 1594 with the 
sonnets of Henry Constable, and these were appended with 
some additions to the authentic edition of Sidney's 'Arcadia' 
and other works that appeared in 1598. Sidney enjoyed in the 
decade that followed his death the reputation of a demi-god, 
and the wide dissemination in print of his numerous sonnets in 
159 1 spurred nearly every living poet in England to emulate 
his achievement.^ 

In order to facilitate a comparison of Shakespeare's sonnets 
with those of his contemporaries it will be best to classify the 
sonnetteering efforts that immediately succeeded Sidney's under 
the three headings of (i) sonnets of more or less feigned love, 
addressed to a more or less fictitious mistress; (2) sonnets of 
adulation, addressed to patrons; and (3) sonnets invoking meta- 
physical abstractions or treating impersonally of religion or 
philosophy.^ 

In February 1592 Samuel Daniel published a collection of 
I C 11 t d fifl^Y'five sonnets, with a dedicatory sonnet addressed 
sonnets of to his patroness, Sidney's sister, the Countess of 
eigne ove. pgjjj|3j.Q]^g_ ^s [^^ many French volumes, the 

collection concluded with an 'ode.' ^ At every point Daniel 

' In a preface to Newman's first edition of Astrophel and Stella the editor, Thomas 
Nash, in a burst of exultation over what he deemed the surpassing merits of Sidney's 
sonnets, exclaimed : ' Put out your rushlights, you poets and rhymers ! and bequeath 
your crazed quatorzains to the chandlers ! for lo, here he cometh that hath broken 
your legs.' But the effect of Sidney's work was just the opposite to that which Nash 
anticipated. It gave the sonnet in England a vogue that it never enjoyed before or 
since. 

* With collections of sonnets of the first kind are occasionally interspersed sonnets 
of the second or third class, but I classify each sonnet-collection according to its pre- 
dominant characteristic. 

3 Daniel reprinted all but nine of the sonnets that had been unwarrantably ap- 
pended to Sidney's Astrophel. These nine he permanently dropped. 



446 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

betrayed his indebtedness to French sonnetteers, even when 
apologising for his inferiority to Petrarch (No. xxxviii). His title 
he borrowed from the collection of Maurice Seve, whose as- 
Daniei's semblagc of dixains called 'Delie, objet de plus haute 
'Delia,' 1592. yertu' (Lyon, 1544), was the pattern of all sonnet- 
sequences on love, and was a constant theme of commendation 
among the later French sonnetteers. But it is to Desportes 
that Daniel owes most, and his methods of handling his mate- 
rial may be judged by a comparison of his Sonnet xxvi with 
Sonnet Ixiii in Desportes' collection, 'Cleonice: Dernieres 
Amours,' which was issued at Paris in 1575. 
Desportes' sonnet runs: 

Je verray par les ans vengeurs de mon martyre 
Que Tor de vos cheveux argente deviendra, 
Que de vos deux soleils la splendeur s'esteindra, 

Et qu'il faudra qu' Amour tout confus s'en retire. 

La beaute qui si douce a present vous inspire, 

Cedant aux lois du Temps ses faveurs reprendra, 
L'hiver de vostre teint les fleurettes perdra, 

Et ne laissera rien des thresors que i' admire. 

Cest orgueil desdaigneux qui vous fait ne m' aimer, 

En regret et chagrin se verra transformer, 

Avec le changement d'une image si belle: 
Et pent estre qu'alors vous n'aurez desplaisir 
De revivre en mes vers chauds d' amour eux desir, 

Ainsi que le Phenix au feu se renouvelle. 

This is Daniel's version, which he sent forth as an original 
production : « 

I once may see, when years may wreck my wrong. 

And golden hairs may change to silver wire; 

And those bright rays (that kindle all this fire) 
Shall fail in force, their power not so strong. 
Her beauty, now the burden of my song, 

Whose glorious blaze the world's eye doth admire, 

Must yield her praise to tyrant Time's desire; 
Then fades the flower, which fed her pride so long, 
When if she grieve to gaze her in her glass, 

Which then presents her winter-withered hue: 
Go you my verse ! go tell her what she was ! 

For what she was, she best may find in you. 
Your fiery heat lets not her glory pass. 

But Phoenix-like to make her live anew. 



VOGUE OF THE ELIZABETHAN SONNET 447 

In Daniel's beautiful sonnet (xlix) beginning — 

Care-charmer Sleep, son of the sable Night, 
Brother to Death, in silent darkness born, 

he has borrowed much from De Baif and Pierre de Brach, sonnet- 
teers with whom it was a convention to invocate 'O Sommeil 
chasse-soin.' But again he chiefly relies on Desportes, whose 
words he adapts with very slight variations. Sonnet Ixxv of 
Desportes' 'Amours d'Hippolyte' opens thus: 

Sommeil, paisible fils de la Nuict solitaire .... 
O frere de la Mort, que tu m'es ennemi ! 

Daniel's sonnets were enthusiastically received. With some 
additions they were republished in 1594 with his narrative poem 
Fame of 'The Complaint of Rosamund.' The volume was 

Daniel's Called 'Delia and Rosamund Augmented.' Spenser, 
in his 'CoHn Clouts come Home againe,' lauded the 
'well-tuned song' of Daniel's sonnets, and Shakespeare has some 
claim to be classed among Daniel's many sonnetteering disciples. 
The anonymous author of 'Zepheria' (1594) declared that the 
'sweet tuned accents' of 'Delian sonnetry' rang throughout 
England; while Bartholomew Griflin, in his 'Fidessa' (1596), 
openly plagiarised Daniel, invoking in his Sonnet xv 'Care- 
charmer Sleep, . . . brother of quiet Death.' 

In September of the same year (1592) that saw the first 
complete version of Daniel's 'Delia,' Henry Constable published 
Constable's 'Diana: the Praises of his Mistres in certaine sweete 
'Diana,' Sonnets.' Like the title, the general tone was drawn 

^^^^' from Desportes' 'Amours de Diane.' Twenty-one 

poems were included, all in the French vein. The collection 
was reissued, with very numerous additions, in 1594 under the 
title 'Diana; or. The excellent conceitful Sonnets of H. C. 
Augmented with divers Quatorzains of honourable and learned 
personages.' This volume is a typical venture of the book- 
sellers.^ The printer, James Roberts, and the publisher, Richard 
Smith, supplied dedications respectively to the reader and to 
Queen Elizabeth's ladies-in-waiting. They had swept together 
sonnets in manuscript from all quarters and presented their 

I Elizabethan Sonnets, ed. Lee, ii. 75-114. 



44? ::: william Shakespeare r 

customers with- a disordered miscellany of what they Ccilled 
'orphan poems.' Besides the twenty sonnets by. Constable, 
eight were claimed for Sir Philip Sidney, and the remaining 
forty-seven are by various hands which have not as yet been 
identified. 

In 1593 the legion of sonnetteers received notable reinforce- 
ments. In May came out Barnabe Barnes's interesting volume, 
g , ' Parthenophil and Parthenophe: Sonnets, Madrigals, 

sonnets, Elegies, and Odes. To the right noble and virtuous 

^^^^' gentleman, M. WilHam Percy, Esq., his dearest 

friend.' ^ The contents of the volume and their arrangement 
closely resemble the sonnet-collections of Petrarch or the 
'Amours' of Ronsard. There are a hundred and five sonnets 
altogether, interspersed with twenty-six madrigals, five sestines, 
twenty-one elegies, three 'canzons,' and twenty 'odes,' one in 
sonnet form. There is, moreover, included what purports , 
to be a translation of 'Moschus' first eidillion describing love,' 
but is clearly a rendering of a French poem by Amadis 
Jamin, entitled 'Amour Fuitif, du grec de Moschus,' in his 
'CEuvres Poetiques,' Paris, 1579.^ At the end of Barnes's 
volume there also figure six dedicatory sonnets. In Sonnet xcv 
Barnes pays a compHment to Sir Philip Sidney, 'the Arcadian 
shepherd, Astrophel,' but he did not draw so largely on Sidney's 
work as on that of Ronsard, Desportes, De Baif, and Du Bellay. 
Legal metaphors abound in Barnes's poems, but amid many 
crudities he reaches a high level of beauty in Sonnet Ixvi, 
which runs: 

Ah, sweet Content ! where is thy mild abode ? 
Is it with shepherds, and light-hearted swains, 
Which sing upon the downs, and pipe abroad, 
Tending their flocks and cattle on the plains? 

Ah, sweet Content ! where dost thou safely rest 
In Heaven, with Angels? which the praises sing 
Of Him that made, and rules at His behest, 
The minds and hearts of every living thing. 



I Elizabethan Sonnets, ed. Lee, i. 165-316. 

» Ben Jonson developed the same conceit in his masque, The Hue and Cry after 
Cupid, 1608. 



VOGUE OF THE ELIZABETHAN SONNET 449 

Ah, sweet Content ! where doth thine harbour hold ? 
Is it in churches, with reUgious men. 
Which please the gods with prayers manifold; 
And in their studies meditate it then? 

Whether thou dost in Heaven, or earth appear; 

Be where thou wilt! Thou wilt not harbour here!^ 

In August 1593 there appeared a posthumous collection of 
sixty-one sonnets by Thomas Watson, entitled 'The 
'TearTo^f Tears of Fancie, or Love Disdained.' They are 
Fancie,' throughout of the imitative type of his previously pub- 

lished 'Centurieof Love.' Many of them sound the 
same note as Shakespeare's sonnets to the 'dark lady.' 

In September 1593 followed Giles Fletcher's 'Licia, or 
Poems of Love in honour of the admirable and singular virtues 
p, , , of his Lady.' This collection of fifty-three sonnets 
'Licia.' is dedicated to the wife of Sir Richard Mollineux. 

1593- Fletcher makes no concealment that his sonnets are 

literary exercises. 'For this kind of poetry,' he tells the reader, 
'I did it to try my humour'; and on the title-page he notes that 
the work was written 'to the imitation of the best Latin poets 
and others.' ^ 

The most notable contribution to the sonnet-literature 
of 1593 was Thomas Lodge's 'PhiUis Honoured with Pastoral 
J , , Sonnets, Elegies, and Amorous Delights.' ^ Besides 

•PhiTiis,' forty sonnets, some of which exceed fourteen lines 
^^^~^' in length and others are shorter, there are in- 

cluded three elegies and an ode. A large number of Lodge'^ 
sonnets are Hterally translated from Ronsard and Desportes. 
How servile Lodge could be may be learnt from a comparison 
of his Sonnet xxxvi with Desportes's sonnet from 'Les Amours 
de Diane,' livre 11. sonnet iii. 

Thomas Lodge's Sonnet xxxvi runs thus: 

If so I seek the shades, I presently do see 
The god of love forsake his bow and sit me by; 
If that I think to write, his Muses pliant be; 
If so I plain my grief, the wanton boy will cry. 

I Dekker's well-known song, 'Oh, sweet content,' in his play of 'Patient Gris- 
selde' (1599), echoes this sonnet of Barnes. » Eliz. Sonnets, ii. 23-74. 

3 There is a convenient reprint of Lodge's Phillis in Elizabethan Sonnet-Cycles 
by Martha Foote Crow, 1896; see also Elizabethan Sonnets, ed. Lee, ii. 1-22. 
2G 



450 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

If I lament his pride, he doth increase my pain; 
If tears my cheeks attaint, his cheeks are moist with moan; 
If I disclose the wounds the which my heart hath slain 
He takes his fascia off, and wipes them dry anon. 

If so I walk the woods, the woods are his delight; 
If I myself torment, he bathes him in my blood; 
He will my soldier be if once I wend to fight. 
If seas delight, he steers my bark amidst the flood. 

In brief, the cruel god doth never from me go, 

But makes my lasting love eternal with my woe. 

Desportes wrote in 'Les Amours de Diane,' book n, son- 
net iii: 

Si ie me sies a F ombre, aussi soudainement 

Amour, laissant son arc, s'assiet et se repose: 

Si ie pense a des vers, ie le voy qu'il compose: -^ 

Si ie plains mes douleurs, il se plaint hautement. 
Si ie me plains du mal, il accroist mon tourment: 

Si ie respan des pleurs, son visage il arrose: 

Si ie monstre la playe en ma poitrine enclose, 

II defait son bandeau I'essuyant doucement. 
Si ie vay par les bois, aux bois il m'accompagne: 

Si ie me suis cruel, dans mon sang il se bagne: 

Si ie vais a la guerre, il deuient mon soldart: 
Si ie passe la mer, il conduit ma nacelle : 

Bref, iamais I'inhumain de moy ne se depart, 

Pour rendre mon amour et ma peine eternelle. 

Three new volumes in 1594, together with the reissue of 
Daniel's 'DeHa' and of Constable's 'Diana' (in a piratical mis- 
cellany of sonnets from many pens), prove the steady growth 
of the sonnetteering vogue. Michael Drayton in June pro- 
duced his 'Ideas Mirrour, Amours in Quatorzains,' containing 
Drayton's fifty-one 'Amours' and a sonnet addressed to 
'Idea,' 1594. <}^jg ever kind Mecaenas, Anthony Cooke.' Drayton 
acknowledged his devotion to 'divine Sir Philip,' but by 
his choice of title, style, and phraseology, the English sonnet- 
teer once more betrayed his indebtedness to Desportes and 
his compeers. 'L'Idee' was the name of a collection of sonnets 
by Claude de Pontoux in 1579. Many additions were made 
by Drayton to the sonnets that he published in 1594, and 
many were subtracted before 16 19, when there appeared the 
last edition that was prepared in Drayton's lifetime. A com- 
parison of the various editions (1594, 1599, 1605, and 1619) shows 



VOGUE OF THE ELIZABETHAN SONNET 45 1 

that Drayton published a hundred sonnets, but the majority 
were apparently circulated by him in early life.^ 

William Percy, the 'dearest friend' of Barnabe Barnes, pub- 
lished in 1594, in emulation of Barnes, a collection of twenty 
Percy's 'Sonncts to the fairest Coelia.' ^ He explains, in an 

'Cceiia,'i594. address to the reader, that out of courtesy he had 
lent the sonnets to friends, who had secretly committed them to 
the press. Making a virtue of necessity, he had accepted the 
situation, but begged the reader to treat them as 'toys and 
amorous devices.' 

A collection of forty sonnets or 'canzons,' as the anony- 
mous author calls them, also appeared in 1594 with the title 
'Zepheria,' 'Zepheria.' ^ In some prefatory verses addressed 

1594- 'Alii veri figlioli delle Muse' laudatory reference 
was made to the sonnets of Petrarch, Daniel, and Sidney. 
Several of the sonnets labour at conceits drawn from the 
technicalities of the law, and Sir John Davies parodied these 
efforts in the eighth of his 'guUing sonnets' beginning, 'My case 
is this. I love Zepheria bright.' 

Four interesting ventures belong to 1595. In January, 
appended to Richard Barnfield's poem of 'Cynthia,' a pane- 
gyric on Queen Elizabeth, was a series of twenty sonnets 
extolling the personal charms of a young man in emulation of 
Virgil's Eclogue ii, in which the shepherd Corydon addressed 
Barnfield's' the shephcrd-boy Alexis.* In Sonnet xx the author 
Ganymede expressed regret that the task of celebrating his 

1595- young friend's praises had not fallen to the more 
capable hand of Spenser ('great Colin, chief of shepherds all') 
or Drayton ('gentle Rowland, my professed friend'). Barnfield 
at times imitated Shakespeare. 

Almost at the same date as Barnfield's 'Cynthia' made its 
Spenser's appearance there was published the more notable col- 
'Amoretti,' lection by Edmund Spenser of eighty-eight sonnets, 
^^^^' which, in reference to their Italian origin, he entitled 

'Amoretti.' ^ Spenser had already translated many sonnets 
on philosophic topics of Petrarch and Joachim Du Bellay. 

' See p. 114, note. " Eliz. Sonnets, ii. 137-151. 3 lb. ii. 153-178. 

* Reprinted in Arber's English Scholars' Library, 1882. 
s It was licensed for the press on November 19, 1594. 



452 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

Some of the 'Amoretti' were doubtless addressed by Spenser in 
1593 to the lady who became his wife a year later. But the 
sentiment was largely ideal, and, as he says in Sonnet Ixxxvii, 
he wrote, Hke Drayton, with his eyes fixed on 'Idasa.' Several 
of Spenser's sonnets are unacknowledged translations of Tasso. 

An unidentified 'E. C, Esq.,' produced also in 1595, under 
the title of 'Emaricdulfe,' ^ a collection of forty sonnets, echoing 
'Emaric- English and French models. In the dedication to his 
dulfe,'i595- 'two very good friends, John Zouch and Edward 
Fitton Esquiers,' the. author tells them that an ague confined him 
to his chamber, 'and to abandon idleness he completed an idle 
work that he had already begun at the command and service of 
a fair dame.' 

To 1595 may best be referred the series of nine 'GulHnge 
sonnets,' or parodies, which Sir John Davies wrote and circulated 
Sir Tohn ^^ manuscript, in order to put to shame what he 
Davies 's regarded as 'the bastard sonnets' in vogue. He 
Sonnets,' addrcsscd his collection to Sir Anthony Cooke, 
^^95- whom Drayton had already celebrated as the 

Mecaenas of his sonnetteering efforts.^ Davies seems to have 
aimed at Shakespeare as well as at insignificant rhymers like 
the author of 'Zepheria.' ^ No. viii of Davies's 'gullinge 
sonnets,' which ridicules the legal metaphors of the sonnetteers, 
may be easily matched in the collections of Barnabe Barnes or 
of the author of 'Zepheria,' but Davies's phraseology suggests 
that he also was glancing at Shakespeare's legal sonnets Ixxxvii 
and cxxxiv. Davies's sonnet runs: 

My case is this. I love Zepheria bright, 
Of her I hold my heart by fealty : 
Which I discharge to her perpetually, 
Yet she thereof will never me acquit [e]. 
For, now supposing I withhold her right, 
She hath distrained my heart to satisfy 
The duty which I never did deny, 
And far away impounds it with despite. 

I Reprinted for the Roxburghe Club in A Lamport Garland, 1881, edited by 
Mr. Charles Edmonds. 'Emaricdulfe' is an anagram of a lady's name, Marie 
Cufeld, alias Cufaud, alias Cowfold, of Cufaud Manor, near Basingstoke. Her 
mother, a daughter of Sir Geoffrey Pole, was maid of honour to Queen Mary (cf. 
Monthly Packet, 1884-5). She seems to have married one William Ward. 

* Davies's Poems, ed. Grosart, i. 51-62. ^ See p. 132, note. 



VOGUE OF THE ELIZABETHAN SONNET 453 

I labour therefore justly to repleave [i.e. recover] 

My heart which she unjustly doth impound. 

But quick conceit which now is Love's high shreive 

Returns it as esloyned [i.e. absconded], not to be found. 

Then what the law affords — X only crave 

Her heart, for mine inwit her name to have. 

'R. L., gentleman/ probably Richard Linche, published in 
1596 thirty-nine sonnets under the title 'Diella.' ^ The effort is 
J- . , , thoroughly conventional. In an obsequious address 

'Dieiia,' by the publisher, Henry Olney, to Anne, wife of Sir 

^^^^' Henry Glenham, Linche's sonnets are described as 

'passionate' and as 'conceived in the brain of a gallant 
gentleman.' 

To the same year belongs Bartholomev^^ Griffin's 'Fidessa,' 
sixty^two sonnets inscribed to 'William Essex, Esq.' Griffin 

-ffin' designates his sonnets as ' the first fruits of a young 

'Fidessa,' beginner.' He is a shameless plagiarist. Daniel is 
^^^^" his chief model, but he also imitated Sidney, Watson, 

Constable, and Drayton. Sonnet iii, beginning 'Venus and 
young Adonis sitting by her,' is almost identical with the fourth 
poem — a sonnet beginning 'Sweet Cytheraea, sitting by a brook' 
— in Jaggard's piratical miscellany, 'The* Passionate Pilgrim,' 
which bore Shakespeare's name on the title-page.^ Jaggard doubt- 
less stole the poem from Griffin, although it may be in its essen- 
tials the property of some other poet. Three beautiful 
Campion, love-sonnets by Thomas Campion, which are found 
^^^^' in the Harleian MS. 6910, are there dated 1596.^ 

William Smith was the author of 'Chloris,' a third collection 
of sonnets appearing in 1596.^ The volume contains forty-eight 
William sonnets of love of the ordinary type, with three 

^Cbioris adulating Spenser; of these, two open the volume and 

i5q6. one concludes it. Smith says that his sonnets were 

'the budding springs of his study.' In 1600 a license was 
issued by the Stationers' Company for the issue of 'Amours' by 

I Elizabethan Sonnets, ed. Lee, ii. 297-320. ' lb. ii. 261-296. 

3 Cf. Brydges's Excerpta Tudoriana, 1814, i. 35-7. One was printed with some 
alterations in Rosseter's Book of Ayres (1610), and another in the Third Book oj 
Ayres (1617?); see Campion's Works, ed. A. H. BuUen, pp. 15-16, 102. 

•♦ Elizabethan Sonnets, ed. Lee, ii. 321-349. 



454 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

W. S. This no doubt refers to a second collection of sonnets 
by William Smith. The projected volume is not extant.^ 

In 1597 there came out a similar volume by Robert Tofte, 
entitled 'Laura, the Joys of a Traveller, or the Feast of Fancy.' 
The book is divided into three parts, each consisting of forty 
'sonnets' in irregular metres. There is a prose dedication to 
Lucy, sister of Henry, ninth Earl of Northumberland. Tofte 
Robert tclls his patroness that most of his 'toys' 'were 

•Laura' conceived in Italy.' As its name implies, his work 
1597- is a pale reflection of Petrarch. A postscript by a 

friend — 'R. B.' — complains that a publisher had intermingled 
with Tofte's genuinie efforts 'more than thirty sonnets not his.' 
But the style is throughout so uniformly tame that it is not 
possible to distinguish the work of a second hand.^ 

To the same era belongs Sir William Alexander's 'Aurora,' 
a collection of a hundred and six sonnets, with a few songs 
g. ;;^-j|-a^jj^ and elegies interspersed on French patterns. Sir 
Alexander's William describes the work as 'the first fancies of 
^°^^- his youth,' and formally inscribes it to Agnes, 
Countess of Argyle. It was not published till 1604."^ 

Sir Fulke Greville, afterwards Lord Brooke, the intimate 
friend of Sir Philip *Sidney, was author of a like collection of 
Sir Fulke sonnets Called 'Caelica.' The poems number a 
Grevilie's hundred and nine, but few are in strict sonnet metre. 
Only a small proportion profess to be addressed to 
the poet's fictitious mistress, Caslica. Many celebrate the 

^ See p. 406 and note. " Elizabethan Sonnets, ed. Lee, ii. 351-424. 

3 Practically to the same category as these collections of sonnets belong the 
voluminous laments of lovers, in six, eight, or ten lined stanzas, which, though not 
in strict sonnet form, closely resemble in temper the sonnet-sequences. Such are 
Willobie's Avisa, 1594; Alcilia: Philoparthen's Loving Folly, by J. C, 1595; Arbor 
of Amorous Deuices, 1597 (containing two regular sonnets), by Nicholas Breton; 
Alba, the Months Minde of a Melancholy Lover, by Robert Tofte, 1598; Daiphantus, 
or the Passions of Love, by Anthony Scoloker, 1604; Breton's The Passionate Shep- 
heard, or The Shepheardes Loue:} set downe in passions to his Shepheardesse Aglaia: 
with many excellent conceited poems and pleasant sonets fit for young heads to passe 
away idle houres, 1604 (none of the 'sonets' are in sonnet metre); and John Rey- 
nolds' Dolarnys Primerose . . . wherein is expressed the liuely passions of Zeale 
and Loue, 1606. Though George Wither 's similar productions — his exquisitely 
fanciful Fidelia (1617) and his Faire-Virtue, the Mistresse of Phil' Arete (1622) — 
were published at a later period, they were probably designed in the opening years 
of the seventeenth century. 



VOGUE OF THE ELIZABETHAN SONNET 455 

charms of another beauty named Myra, and others invoke 
Queen Elizabeth under her poetic name of Cynthia (cf. Sonnet 
xvii). There are also many addresses to Cupid and medita- 
tions on more or less metaphysical themes, but the tone is never 
very serious. Greville doubtless wrote the majority of his 
'Sonnets' during the period under survey, though they were not 
published until their author's works appeared in folio for the first 
time in 1633, five years after his death. 

With Tofte's volume in 1597 the publication of collections 
of love-sonnets practically ceased. Only two collections on 
„ . - a voluminous scale seem to have been written in 

Estimate of , , 

number of the early years of the seventeenth century. About 
&ueTbe-^*^ 1607 William Drummond of Hawthornden penned 
tween 1591 a Series of sixty-eight interspersed with songs, 
madrigals, and sextains, nearly all of which were 
translated or adapted from modern Italian sonnetteers.^ About 
1610 John Davies of Hereford published his 'Wittes Pilgrimage 
. . . through a world of Amorous Sonnets.' Of more than two 
hundred separate poems in this volume, only the hundred 
and four sonnets in the opening section make any claim to 
answer the description on the title-page, and the majority of 
those are metaphysical meditations on love which are not 
addressed to any definite person. Some years later William 
Browne penned a sequence of fourteen love-sonnets entitled 
'Caelia' and a few detached sonnets of the same type.^ The 
dates of production of Drummond's, Davies's, and Browne's 
sonnets exclude them from the present field of view. Omitting 
them, we find that between 1591 and 1597 there had been 
printed nearly twelve hundred sonnets of the amorous kind. 
If to these we add Shakespeare's poems, and make allow- 
ance for others which, only circulating in manuscript, have 
not reached us, it is seen that more than two hundred love- 
sonnets were produced in each of the six years under survey. 
The literary energies of France and Italy pursued a like direc- 
tion during nearly the whole of the century, but at no other 

' They were first printed in 1656, seven years after the author's death, in Poems 
by that famous wit, William Drimimond, London, fol. The volume was edited by 
Edward Phillips, Milton's nephew. The best modern edition is that edited by 
Mr. W. C. Ward in the 'Muses' Library' (1894). 

' Cf. William Browne's Poems in 'Muses' Library' (1894), ii. 217 et seq. 



456 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

period and in no other country did the love-sonnet dominate 
literature to a greater extent than in England between 1591 and 

1597- 

Of sonnets to patrons between 1591 and 1597, of which 
detached specimens may be found in nearly every published 
book of the period, the chief collections were: 

A long series of sonnets prefixed to 'Poetical Exercises of a 
Vacant Hour' by King James VI of Scotland, 1591; twenty- 
T^ ^ , three sonnets in Gabriel Harvey's 'Four Letters and 

II. Sonnets .0 1 • -r. i /-> 

to patrons, certain Sonnets touchmg Robert Greene (1592), 
1591-7- including Edmund Spenser's fine sonnet of compli- 

ment addressed to Harvey; a series of sonnets to noble 
patronesses by Constable circulated in manuscript about 1592 
(first printed in 'Harleian Miscellany,' 1813, ix. 491); six 
adulatory sonnets appended by Barnabe Barnes to his 'Par- 
thenophil' in May 1593; four sonnets to 'Sir Philip Sidney's 
soul,' prefixed to the first edition of Sidney's 'Apologie for 
Poetrie' (1595); seventeen sonnets which were originally pre- 
fixed to the first edition of Spenser's 'Faerie Queene,' bk. i-iii, 
in 1590, and were reprinted in the edition of 1596;^ sixty 
sonnets to peers, peeresses, and officers of state, appended to 
Henry Locke's (or Lok's) 'Ecclesiasticus' (1597); forty sonnets 
by Joshua Sylvester addressed to Henry IV of France 'upon 
the late miraculous peace in Fraunce' (1599); Sir John Davies's 
series of twenty-six octosyllabic sonnets, which he entitled 
'Hymnes of Astraea,' all extravagantly eulogising Queen Eliza- 
beth (1599). 

The collected sonnets on religion and philosophy that 
appeared in the period 1591-7 include sixteen 'Spirituall 
Sonnettes to the honour of God and Hys Saynts,' written by 

III. Son- Constable about 1593, and circulated only in manu- 
losophyand script; these were first printed from a manuscript 
religion. in the Harleian collection (5993) by Thomas Park 
in 'HeHconia,' 1815, vol. ii. In 1595 Barnabe Barnes published 

^ Chapman imitated Spenser by appending fourteen like sonnets to his transla- 
tion of Homer in 1610; they were increased in later issues to twenty-two. Very 
numerous sonnets to patrons were appended by John Davies of Hereford to his 
Microcosmos (1603) and to his Scourge of Folly (161 1). 'Divers sonnets, epistles, 
&c.' addressed to patrons by Joshua Sylvester between 1590 and his death in 16 18 
were collected in the 1641 edition of his Du Bartas his divine weekes and workes. 



VOGUE OF THE ELIZABETHAN SONNET 457 

a 'Divine Centurie of Spirituall Sonnets,' and, in dedicating the 
collection to Toby Matthew, bishop of Durham, mentions that 
they were written a year before, while travelling in France. 
They are closely modelled on the two series of 'Sonnets 
Spirituels' which the Abbe Jacques de Billy published in Paris in 
1573 and 1578 respectively. A long series of 'Sonnets Spirituels' 
written by Anne de Marquets, a sister of the Dominican Order, 
who died at Poissy in 1598, was first published in Paris in 1605. 
In 1594 George Chapman published ten sonnets in praise of 
philosophy, which he entitled 'A Coronet foi* his Mistress Philo- 
sophy.' In the opening poem he states that his aim was to 
dissuade poets from singing in sonnets 'Love's Sensual Empery.' 
In 1597 Henry Locke (or Lok) appended to his verse-rendering 
of Ecclesiastes ^ a collection of 'Sundrie Sonets of Christian 
Passions, with other Affectionate Sonets of a Feeling Conscience.' 
Lok had in 1593 obtained a license to publish 'a hundred 
Sonnets on Meditation, Humihation, and Prayer,' but that work 
is not extant. In the volume of 1597 his sonnets on religious or 
philosophical themes number no fewer than three hundred and 
twenty-eight.^ 

Thus in the total of sonnets published between 1591 and 
1597 must be included at least five hundred sonnets addressed 
to patrons, and as many on philosophy and religion. The 
aggregate far exceeds two thousand. 

' Remy Belleau in 1566 brought out a similar poetical version of the Book of 
Ecclesiastes entitled Vanite. 

= There are forty-eight sonnets on the Trinity and similar topics appended to 
Davies's Wiltes Pilgrimage (1610?). 



458 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 



X 

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE ON THE SONNET 
IN FRANCE, 1550-1600 

In the earlier years of the sixteenth century Melin de-Saint- 
Gelais (148 7-1558) and Clement Marot (1496-1544) made a few 
scattered efforts at sonnetteering in France; and Maurice Seve 
laid down the lines of all sonnet-sequences on themes of love 
Ronsard in his dixains entitled 'Delie' (1544). But it was 

ind^La^^^'* Ronsard (1524-1585), in the second half of the 
Pieiade.' ccutury, who first gave the sonnet a pronounced 

vogue in France. The sonnet was handled with the utmost 
assiduity not only by Ronsard, but by all the literary comrades 
whom he gathered round him, and on whom he bestowed the 
title of 'La Pieiade.' The leading aim that united Ronsard 
and his friends was the re-formation of the French language 
and literature on classical models. But they assimilated and 
naturalised in France not only much that was admirable in 
Latin and Greek poetry,^ but all that was best in the recent 
Italian literature.^ Although they were learned poets, Ronsard 

I Graphic illustrations of the attitude of Ronsard and his friends to a Greek poet 
like Anacreon appear in Anacreon et les Poemes anacreontiques, Texte grec avec les 
Traductions et Imitations des Poetes du XVI^ siecle, par A. Delboulle (Ha^Te, 1891). 
A translation of Anacreon by Remy Belleau appeared in 1556. Cf. Sainte-Beuve's 
essay, 'Anacreon au XVI^ siecle,' in his Tableau de la Poesie fran^aise au XVI^ 
siecle (1893), pp. 432-47. In the same connection Anthologie ou Recueil des plus 
beaux Epigrammes Grecs, . . . mis en vers frangois sur la version Latine, par Pierre 
Tamisier (Lyon, 1589, new edit. 1607), is of interest. 

^ Italy was the original home of the sonnet, and it was as popular a poetic form 
with Italian writers of the sixteenth century as with those of the three preceding 
centuries. The Italian poets whose sonnets, after those of Petrarch, were best known 
in England and France in the later years of the sixteenth century were Serafino dell' 
Aquila (1466-1500), Jacopo Sannazzaro (1458-1530), Agnolo Firenzuola (1497-1547), 
Cardinal Bembo (1470-1547), Gaspara Stampa (1524-1553), Pietro Aretino (1492- 



THE SONNET IN FRANCE 459 

and the majority of his associates had a natural lyric vein, 
which gave their poetry the charms of freshness and spontaneity. 
The true members of 'La Pleiade/ according to Ronsard's 
own statement, were, besides himself, Joachim du Bellay (1524- 
1560); Estienne Jodelle (1532-1573); Remy Belleau (1528- 
1577); Jean Dinemandy, usually known as Daurat or Dorat 
(1508-1588), Ronsard's classical teacher in early life; Jean- 
Antoine de Baif (1532-1589); and Ponthus de Thyard (1521- 
1605). Others of Ronsard's Hterary allies are often loosely 
reckoned among the 'Pleiade.' These writers include Jean de 
la Peruse (1529-1554), Olivier de Magny (1530-1559), Amadis 
Jamyn (i538?-i585), Jean Passerat (1534-1602)^ Philippe Des- 
portes (1546-1606), Estienne Pessquier (1529-1615), Scevole de 
Sainte-Marthe (1536-1623), and Jean Bertaut (1552-1611). 
These subordinate members of the 'Pleiade' were no less 
Desportes devoted to sonnetteering than the original members. 
(1546-1606). Of those in this second rank, Desportes was most 
popular in France as well as in England. Although many of 
Desportes's sonnets are graceful in thought and melodious in 
rhythm, most of them abound in overstrained conceits. Not 
only was Desportes a more slavish imitator of Petrarch than the 
members of the 'Pleiade,' but he encouraged numerous disciples 
to practise 'Petrarchism,' as the imitation of Petrarch was 
called, beyond healthful limits. Under the influence of Des- 
portes the French sonnet became, during the latest years of 
the sixteenth century, little more than an empty and fantastic 
echo of the Italian. 

The following statistics will enable the reader to realise how 
closely the sonnetteering movement in France adumbrated that 

1557), Bernardo Tasso (1493-1568), Luigi Tansillo (1510-1568), Gabriello Fiamma 
{d. 1585), Torquato Tasso (1544-1595), Luigi Groto {fl. 1570), Giovanni Battista 
Guarini (1537-1612), and Giovanni Battista Marino (1565-1625) (cf. Tiraboschi's 
Storia delta Letteratura Italiana, 17 70-1 782; Dr. Garnett's History of Italian Liter- 
ature, 1897; and Symonds's Renaissance in Italy, edit. 1898, vols, iv and vi). The 
present wrriter's preface to Elizabethan Sonnets (2 vols. 1904). and the notes to Wat- 
son's Passionate Cenfurie of Love, published in 1582 (see p. 107, note), to Davison's 
Poetical Rhapsody (ed. Mr. A. H. Bullen, 1891), and to Poems of Drummond oj 
Hawthornden (ed. Mr. W. C. Ward, 1894), give many illustrations of English son- 
netteers' indebtedness to Serafino, Groto, Marino, Guarini, Tasso, and other Italian 
Sonne tteers of the sixteenth century. 



460 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

in England. The collective edition in 1584 of the works of 
Ronsard, the master of the 'Pleiade/ contains more than nine 
hundred separate sonnets arranged under such titles as 'Amours 
CJiief collec- ^e Cassandre/ 'Amours de Marie,' 'Amours pour 
French Astrec,' 'Amours pour Helene'; besides 'Amours 

sonnets Divcrs' and 'Sonnets Divers,' complimentary ad- 

betw?eni55o dresses to friends and patrons. Du Bellay's 'Olive,' 
and 1584. a collection of love-sonnets, first published in 1549, 
reached a total of a hundred and fifteen. 'Les Regrets,' Du Bel- 
lay's sonnets on general topics, some of which Edmund Spenser 
first translated into English, numbered in the edition of 1565 a 
hundred and eighty-three. Ponthus de Thyard produced be- 
tween 1549 and 1555 three series of his 'Erreurs Amour^uses,' 
sonnets addressed to Pasithee. De Baif published two long 
series of sonnets, entitled respectively 'Les Amours de MeHne' 
(1552) and 'Les Amours de Francine' (1555). Amadis Jamyn 
was responsible for 'Les Amours d'Oriane,' 'Les Amours de 
Calliree,' and 'Les Amours d'Artemis' (1575). Desportes's 
'Premieres CEuvres' (1575), a very popular book in England, 
included more than three hundred sonnets — a hundred and fifty 
being addressed to Diane, eighty-six to Hippolyte, and ninety- 
one to Cleonice. Belleau brought out a volume of 'Amours' in 
1576. 

Among other collections of sonnets published by less known 
writers of the period, and arranged here according to date of 
Minor first publication, were those of Guillaume des Autels, 

ofprliidf 'Amoureux Repos' (1553); Olivier de Magny, 
pubifshed 'Amours, Soupirs,' &c. (1553, 1559); Louise Labe, 
between 1553 'CEuvres' (1555); Jacques Tahureau, 'Odes, Son- 
andi6o5. ^^^^^, ^^ (^^^^^ ^^^^y^ Claude de Billet, 'Amal- 

thee,' a hundred and twenty-eight love-sonnets (1561); 
Vauquelin de la Fresnaye, ' Foresteries ' (1555 et annis seq.) ; 
Jacques Grevin, 'Olympe' (1561); Nicolas Ellain, 'Sonnets' 
(1561); Scevole de Sainte-Marthe, 'CEuvres Franjaises' (1569, 
1579); Estienne de la Boetie, 'CEuvres' (1572), and twenty- 
nine sonnets published with Montaigne's 'Essais' (1580); Jean 
et Jacques de la Taille, 'CEuvres' (1573); Jacques de Billy, 
'Sonnets Spirituels' (first series 1573, second series 1578); 
Estienne Jodelle, 'CEuvres Poetiques' (1574); Claude de Pon- 



THE SONNET IN FRANCE 46 1 

toux, 'Sonnets de I'ldee' (1579); Les Dames des Roches, 
/QEuvres' (1579, 1584); Pierre de Brach, 'Amours d'Aymee' 
{circa 1580); Gilles Durant, 'Poesies' — sonnets to Charlotte 
and Camille (1587, 1594); Jean Passerat, 'Vers . . . d'Amours' 
(1597); and Anne de Marquet, who died in 1588, 'Sonnets 
Spirituels' (1605).^ 

^ There are modern reprints of most of these books, but not of all. There is a 
good reprint of Ronsard's works, edited by M. P. Blanchemain, in La Bibliotheque 
Elzevirienne, 8 vols., 1867; the Etude siir la Vie de Ronsard, in the eighth volume, 
is useful. The works of Remy Belleau are issued in the same series. The writings 
of the seven original members of 'La Pleiade' are reprinted in La Pleiade Fran- 
^aise, edited by Marty-Laveaux, 16 vols., 1866-93. Maurice Seve's Delie was re- 
issued at Lyons in 1862. Pierre de Brach's poems were carefully edited by Reinhold 
Dezeimeris (2 vols., Paris, 1862). A complete edition of Desportes's works, edited by 
Alfred Michiels, appeared in 1863. Prosper Blanchemain edited a reissue of the 
works of Louise Labe in 1875. The works of Jean de la Taille, of Amadis Jamyn, 
and of Guillaume des Autels are reprinted in Tresor des Vieux Foeies Francais (1877 
et annis seq.). See Sainte-Beuve's Tableau Historique et Critique de la Foesie Fran- 
gaise du XVI^ Siecle (Paris, 1893); Henry Francis Gary's Early French Poets (Lon- 
don, 1846); Becq de Fouquieres' QLuvres choisies des Poeles Francais du XV le 
Siecle contemporains avec Ronsard (1880), and the same editor's selections from De 
Baif, Du Bellay, and Ronsard; Darmesteter et Hatzf eld's Le 'Seizieme Siecle en 
France — Tableau de la Litterature et de la Langue (6th edit., 1897); and Petit de 
Julleville's Histoire de la Langue et de la Litterature Franqaise (1897, iii. 136-260). 



INDEX 



ABBEY 

Abbey, Mr. E. A., 358 

Abbott, Dr. E. A., 380 

Actor, Shakespeare as an, 44-46. 
See also Roles, Shakespeare's 

Actors: entertained for the first 
time at Stratford-on-Avon, 10; 
return of the two chief companies 
to London in 1587, 34; the 
players' licensing Act of Queen 
Elizabeth, 35; companies of boy- 
actors, 35, 36, 39, 220-1; com- 
panies of adult actors in 1587, 
36; the patronage of the com- 
pany which was joined by Shake- 
speare, 36, 37; women's parts 
played by men or boys, 39 and 
n 3; tours in the provinces, 41- 
43; foreign tours, 43; Shake- 
speare's alleged scorn of their 
calling, 45, 46; 'advice' to actors 
in Hamlet, 46; their incomes, 
205, 206 and w 2, 207-8; the strife 
between adult actors and boy- 
actors, 220-24, 228; patronage 
of actors, by King James, 238, 
239 n I ; substitution of women 
for boys in female parts, 351, 

352 
Adam, in As You Like It, played 

by Shakespeare, 45 
Adaptations by Shakespeare of old 

plays, 56 
Adaptations of Shakespeare's plays 

at the Restoration, 347, 348 
Adulation, extravagance of, in the 

days of Queen Elizabeth, 141, 

142 and n 2 
iEschylus, Hamlet's 'sea of trou- 



ANDERS'S 

bles' paralleled in the Persa 
of, 14 n; resemblance between 
Lady Macbeth and Clytemnestra 
in the Agamemnon of, 14 w 

Esthetic criticism, 349 

Alexander, Sir William, sonnets by, 

454 

Allen, Mr. Charles, 389 

AUeyn, Edward, manages the amal- 
gamated companies of the 
Admiral and Lord Strange, 38; 
pays fivepence for the pirated 
Sonnets, 94 n; his large savings, 
211 

Allot, Robert, 327 

AWs Well that Ends Well: the 
sonnet form of a letter of Helen, 
88; probable date of production, 
167; plot drawn from Painter's 
'Palace of Pleasure,' 167; proba- 
bly identical with Lovers Labour's 
Wo7i, 167; chief characters, 167; 
its resemblance to the Two Gen- 
tlemen of Verona, 167. For edi- 
tions see Section xix. (Biblio- 
graphy), 311-41 

America, enthusiasm for Shake- 
speare in, 357j 358; copies of 
the First Folio in, 320, 322 n 

Amner, Rev. Richard, 336 
'Amoretti,' Spenser's, 119, 451 and 

w 5. 452 
'Amours' by 'J. D.,' 406 and n 
Amphitruo of Plautus, the, and 

The Comedy of Errors, 55 
'Amyntas,' complimentary title of-, 

401 n 2 
Anders's Shakespeare's Books, 380 



463 



464 



WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 



ANGELO • 

Angelo, Michael, 'dedicatory' son- 
nets of, 142 n 2 

'Anthia and Abrocomas,' by Xeno- 
phon Ephesius, and the story of 
Romeo and Juliet, 56 w i 

Antony and Cleopatra: allusion to 
the part of Cleopatra being played 
by a boy, 39 w 3 ; the youthful- 
ness of Octavius Caesar, 147 
n 2; date of entry in the 'Sta- 
tioners' Registers,' 254; date of 
publication, 254; the story derived 
from Plutarch, 254; the 'happy 
valiancy' of the style, 255. Iter 
editions see Section xix (Biblio- 
graphy), 31 1-4 1 

ApoUonius and Silla, Historie of, 
218 

'Apologie for Poetrie,' Sidney's, 
allusion to the conceit of the im- 
mortalising power of verse in, 118; 
on the adulation of patrons, 142 

'Apology for Actors,' Heywood's, 
189^ 

Apuleius' Golden Ass, 260 

'Arcadia,' Sidney's, 92 n, 250 and 

n, 445 

Arden family, of Warwickshire, 6, 
198 

Arden family, of Alvanley, 199 

Arden, Alice, 7 

Arden, Edward, executed for com- 
plicity in a Popish plot, 6 

Arden, Joan, 12 

Arden, Mary. See Shakespeare, 
Mary 

Arden, Robert (i), sheriff of War- 
wickshire and Leicestershire in 
1438, 6 

Arden, Robert (2), landlord at Snit- 
terfield of Richard Shakespeare, 
3, 6; marriage of his daughter 
Mary to John Shakespeare, 6, 7; 
his family and second marriage, 
6; his property and will, 7 

Arden, Thomas, grandfather of 
Shakespeare's mother, 6 

Arden of Feversham, a play of un- 
certain authorship, 75 

Ariel, character of, 265 

Ariodante and Ginevra, Historie of, 
215 

Ariosto, I Suppositi of, 168; Or- 



ASTROPHEL 

lando Furioso of, and Much Ado 
about Nothing, 215 

Aristotle, quotation from, made by 
both Shakespeare and Bacon, 
386 n 

Armado, in Lovers Labour's Lost, 
52 n, 64 

Armenian language, translation of 
Shakespeare in the, 371 

Arms, coat of, Shakespeare's, 196, 
197, 198, 200 

Arms, College of, applications of 
the poet's father to, 2, 10 n, 
194-8 

Arne, Dr., 350 _ 

Arnold, Matthew, 343 n i 

Art in England, its indebtedness to 
Shakespeare, 357 

As You Like It: allusion to the 
part of Rosalind being played by 
a boy, 39 w 3 ; ridicule of foreign 
travel, 43 w 2; acknowledgments 
to Marlowe (iii. v. 8), 65; 
adapted from Lodge's 'Rosa- 
lynde,' 216; addition of three new 
characters, 216; hints taken from 
'Saviolo's Practise,' 216; its pas- 
toral character, 216; said to have 
been performed before King 
James at Wilton, 240 n i, 411 n. 
For editions see Section xix 
(Bibliography), 311-41 

Asbies, the chief property of Robert 
Arden at Wilmcote, bequeathed 
to Shakespeare's mother, 7; 
mortgaged to Edmund Lambert, 
12; proposal to confer on John 
Lambert an absolute title to the 
property, 27; Shakespeare's en- 
deavour to recover, 202 

Ashbee, Mr. E. W., 314 n 

Aspley, William, bookseller, 94, 
215.W I, 316, 327 

Assimilation, literary, Shakespeare's 
power of, 63, 113 seq. 

Aston Cantlowe, 6; place of the 
marriage of Shakespeare's pa- 
rents, 7 

'Astrophel,' apostrophe to Sidney 
in Spenser's, 147 n 2 

'Astrophel and Stella,' 87; the 
metre of, gg n 2; address to 
Cupid, loi w; the praise of 'black- 



INDEX 



46s 



AUBREY 

ness' in, 123 and n i, 157 n i; 
editions of, 444, 445 
Aubrey, John, the poet's early bio- 
grapher, on John Shakespeare's 
trade, 4; on the poet's know- 
ledge of Latin, 16; on John 
Shakespeare's relations with the 
trade of butcher, 18; on the poet 
at Grendon, 32; lines quoted by 
him on John Combe, 278 n 2; 
on Shakespeare's genial disposi- 
tion, 287; value of his biography 
of the poet, 377; his ignorance 
of any relation between Shake- 
speare and the Earl of Pembroke, 

430, 431 

'Aurora,' title of Sir W. Alexander's 
collection of sonnets, 454 

Autobiographical features of Shake- 
speare's plays, 168-71, 258; of 
Shakespeare's sonnets, the ques- 
tion of, 104, 113, 129, 157, 164 

Autographs of the poet, 293-6 

'Avisa,' heroine of Willobie's poem, 

159 -y^?- 
Ayrer, Jacob, his Die schone Sidea, 

262 and n i 
Ayscough, Samuel, 2,^0 n 

Bacon, Miss Delia, 388 

Bacon Society, 388 

Bacon-Shakespeare controversy, 
(Appendix 11), 386-9 

Baddesley Clinton, the Shake- 
speares of, 3 

Baif, De, plagiarised indirectly by 
Shakespeare, 115 and n; in- 
debtedness of Daniel and others 
to, 447, 448; one of 'La Pleiade,' 
459> 460 

Bandello, the story of Romeo and 
Juliet by, 56 tz i ; the story of 
Hero and Claudio by, 215; the 
story of 'Twelfth Night' by, 218 

'Bankside' edition of Shakespeare, 

^ 339-40 

Barante, recognition of the great- 
ness of Shakespeare by, 367 

Barnard, Sir John, second husband 
of the poet's granddaughter Eliza- 
beth, 291 

Barnay, Ludwig, 363 

Barnes, Barnabe, legal terminology 

2H 



BEGETTER 

in his sonnets, 33 w 2 and (Ap- 
pendix ix) 448; use of the word 
'wire,' 122 n 2; his sonnets 
of vituperation, 124; the pro- 
bable rival of Shakespeare for 
Southampton's favour, 134, 135, 
136, 139 n; his sonnets, 135, 136, 
448; called 'Petrarch's scholar' 
by Churchyard, 137; expressions 
in his sonnet (xlix) adopted by 
Shakespeare, 156 w; sonnet to 
Lady Bridget Manners, 395 n; 
sonnet to Southampton's eyes, 
400; compliment to Sidney in 
Sonnet xcv, 448; Sonnet Ixvi 
('Ah, sweet Content') quoted, 
448; his sonnets to patrons, 
456; his religious sonnets, 457 

Barnfield, Richard, feigning old age 
in his 'Affectionate Shepherd,' 
90 n; his adulation of Queen Eli- 
zabeth in 'Cynthia,' 141 n, 451; 
sonnets addressed to ' Ganymede,' 
142 n 2, 451 ; predicts immortality 
for Shakespeare, 186; chief author 
of the 'Passionate Pilgrim,' 189 
and n 

Bartholomew Fair, 264 

Bartlett, John, 380 

Barton collection of Shakespeareana 
at Boston, Mass., 358 

Barton-on-the-Heath, 12; identical 
with the 'Burton' in the Taming 
of The Shrew, 169 

Bathurst, Charles, on Shakespeare's 
versification, 50 n 

Baynes, Thomas Spencer, 381 

Beale, Francis, 405 

'Bear Garden in Southwark, The,' 
the poet's lodgings near, 39 

Bearley, 6 

Beaumont, Francis, on 'things 
done at the Mermaid,' 184 

Beaumont, Sir John, 405 

Bedford, Edward Russell, third Earl 
of: his marriage, 165-6 

Bedford, Lucy, Countess of, 142 w 
2, 166 

Beeching, Canon, 95 

Beeston, William (a seventeenth- 
century actor), 30, 44 

'Begetter,' in sense of procurer, 96, 
420, 421 and n 



466 



WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 



BELLAY 

Bellay, Joachim du, Spenser's 
translations of some of his sonnets, 
105; 109^^,448,452,459,460 

Belleau, Remy, poems and sonnets 
by, 457 « I, 4S9> 460, 461 n 

Belleforest (Francois de), Shake- 
speare's indebtedness to the 'His- 
toires Tragiques' of, 15, 56 n i, 
215, 229 

Benda, J. W. O., German transla- 
tion of Shakespeare by, 360 

Benedick and his 'halting sonnet,' 
112; 215 

Benedix, J. R., opposition to Shake- 
spearean worship by, 362 

Bensley, Robert, actor, 354 

Bentley, R., 328 

Berlioz, Hector, 369 

Bermudas, the, and The Tempest, 
261 

Berners, Lord, translation of 
'Huon of Bordeaux' by, 166 

Bernhardt, Madame Sarah, 369 

Bertaut, Jean, 459 

Betterton, Mrs., 351 

Betterton, Thomas, 34, 348, 351, 

378 

Bianca and her lovers, story of, 
partly drawn from the 'Supposes' 
of George Gascoigne, 168 

Bible, the, Shakespeare and, 17, 18 
and n i 

Bibliography of Shakespeare, 311- 
341 

Bidford, near Stratford, legend of a 
drinking bout at, 281 

Biography of the poet, sources of, 
(Appendix i), 377-81^ 

Birmingham, memorial Shake- 
speare library at, 310 

Biron, in Love's Labour's Lost, 52 
and n 

Birih of Merlin, 1S8 

Birthplace, Shakespeare's, 8, 9 

'Bisson,' use of the word, 333 

Blackfriars, Shakespeare's purchase 
of property in, 276, 277, and pref. 

Blackfriars Theatre, built by James 
Burbage (1596), 39, 208; leased 
to 'the Queen's Children of the 
Chapel,' 39, 209, 221; occupied 
by Shakespeare's company, 39; 
litigation of Burbage's heirs, 207; 



BRASSINGTON 

Shakespeare's interest in, 207, 
208; shareholders in, 208 ; Shake- 
speare's disposal of his shares in, 

273 

'Blackness,' Shakespeare's praise 
of. 123-5, cf. 159 

Blades, William, 380 

Blind Beggar of Alexandria, Chap- 
man's, 52 w 

Blount, Edward, publisher, 96, 
139 n, 190, 253, 318, 327, 409, 
410 and n 

Boaden, James, 422 n 

Boaistuau de Launay (Pierre) trans- 
lates Bandello's story of^Romeo 
and Juliet, 56 n i 

Boar's Head Tavern, 175 

Boas, Mr. F. S., 381 

Boccaccio's Decameron, Shake- 
speare's indebtedness to, 167, 
258, 260 and n 3 

Bodenstedt, Friedrich von, German 
translator of Shakespeare, 360 

Bohemia, allotted a seashore in 
Winter's Tale, 260; translations 
of Shakespeare in, 371 

Boiardo, 251-2 

Bompas, Mr. G. C, 389 

Bonian, Richard, printer, 234 

Booth, Barton, actor, 351 

Booth, Edwin, 358 

Booth, Junius Brutus, 358 

Booth, Lionel, 327 

Borck, Baron C. W. von, trans- 
lation of Julius CcBsar into 
German by, 359 

Boswell, James, 350. 

Boswell, James (the younger), 338, 
421 w 

Boswell-Stone, Mr. W. G., 380 

Bottger, A., German translation of 
Shakespeare by, 360 

Boy-actors, 35, 36, 39, 220-1; the 
strife between adult actors and, 
220-24, 228 

Boydell, John, his scheme for illus- 
trating the work of the poet, 357 

Bracebridge, C. H., 380 

Brach, Pierre de, xlix, 105 and n i, 
447, 461 n 

Bradley, Prof. A. C, 381 

Brandes, Mr. Georg, 381 

Brassington, Mr. W. Salt, 302 n 



INDEX 



467 



BRATHWAITE 

Brathwaite, Richard, 278 n 2, 404, 
405 

Breton, Nicholas, homage paid to 
the Countess of Pembroke in 
his poems, 142 n 2; his play on 
the words 'wit' and 'will,' 433 

Brewster, E., 328 

Bridgeman, Mr. C. O., 431 n 

Bright, James Hey wood, 422 n 

Broken Heart, Ford's, similarity of 
theme of Shakespeare's Sonnet 
cxxvi to that of a song in, 10 1 n 

Brooke or Broke, Arthur, his 
translation of the story of Romeo 
and Juliet, 56, 337 

Brooke, Ralph, complains about 
Shakespeare's coat-of-arms, 199, 
200 n; his grievance against his 
colleagues at the College of Arms 
and against Jaggard, 324 n 

Brown, C. Armitage, 422 w 

Brown, John, obtains a writ of 
distraint against Shakespeare's 
father, 12 

Browne, William, love-sonnets by, 
455 and n 2 

Buc, Sir George, 254 

Buckingham, John Sheffield, first 
Duke of, a letter from King 
James to the poet said to have 
been in his possession, 239 n 2 

Bucknill, Dr. John Charles, on the 
poet's medical knowledge, 380 

Burbage, Cuthbert, 38, 207 

Burbage, James, owner of The 
Theatre and keeper of a livery 
stable, 34, 37; erects the Black- 
friars Theatre, 39 

Burbage, Richard, erroneously as- 
sumed to have been a native of 
Stratford, 32 w 2 ; a lifelong friend 
of Shakespeare, 37; demolishes 
The Theatre and builds the 
Globe Theatre, 38, 203, 207; 
performs, with Shakespeare and 
Kemp, before Queen Elizabeth at 
Greenwich Palace, 44; his im- 
personation of the King in 
Richard III, 66; litigation of 
his heirs respecting the Globe 
and the Blackfriars theatres, 
207; his income, 210; 226; 227; 
creates the title-part in Hamlet, 



CAWOOD 

230; 239; his parts in the poet's 
greatest tragedies, 273, 274; 
anecdote of, 274; and Earl of 
Rutland, pref. and 277; the 
poet's bequest to, 285; as a 
painter, 304 

Burbie, Cuthbert, 53 

Burgersdijk, Dr. L. A. J., 370 

Burghley, Lord, 391, 392. 394 

Burton, Francis, bookseller, 415 
n 2, 416 

Busby, John, 178 

Butler, Samuel, 95 

Butter, Nathaniel, 187, 249 



'C, E.,' sonnet by, on lust, 157 n i; 

his 'Emaricdulfe,' 452 
'Cslia,' love-sonnets by William 

Browne entitled, 455 and n 2 
Calderon, 371 
Caliban, the character of, 262, 266 

and notes 
Cambridge, Hamlet acted at, 232 
Cambridge edition of Shakespeare, 

^339 

Camden, William, 198, 324 n 

Campbell, Lord, on the poet's legal 
acquirements, 380 

Campion, Thomas, his opinion of 
Barnes's verse, 137; his sonnet to 
Lord Walden, 145 ; sonnets in 
Harleian MS., 453 and n 3 

Capell, Edward, reprint of Edward 
III in his 'Prolusions,' 75; 232; 
his edition of Shakespeare, 334; 
his works on the poet, 335 

Cardenio, the lost play of, 188, 267, 
268 

Carter, Rev. Thomas, on the alleged 
Puritan sympathies of Shake- 
speare's father, 10 n 

Castelvines y Monteses, Lope de 
Vega's, 56 w I 

Castille, Constable of, entertain- 
ments in his honour at Whitehall, 
241, 242 

Castle, William, parish clerk of 
Stratford, 35 

Catherine II of Russia, adaptations 
of the Merry Wives and King 
John by, 370 

Cawood, Gabriel, publisher of 



468 



WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 



CECIL 

'Mary Magdalene's Funeral 
Tears,' 92 n 

Cecil, Sir Robert, and the Earl of 
Southampton, 147, 395, 397, 398 

'Centurie of Spiritual Sonnets, A,' 
Barnes's, 136 

'Certain Sonnets,' Sidney's, 157 n i 

Cervantes, his 'Don Quixote,' 
foundation of lost play of Car- 
denio, 267; death of, 281 w 3 

Chamberlain, the Lord, his com- 
pany of players. See Hunsdon, 
first Lord and second Lord 

Chamberlain, John, 153, 270 n 

Chapman, George, plays on Biron's 
career by, 52 «, 411 w 2; his An 
Humourous Day's Mirth, 52 n; 
his Blind Beggar of Alexandria, 
52 n\ his censure of sonnetteer- 
ing, no; his alleged rivalry with 
Shakespeare for Southampton's 
favour, 136, 139 n, 190; his 
translation of the 'Iliad,' 235; 
his sonnets to patrons, 404, 456 n; 
sonnets in praise of philosophy, 

457 

Charlecote Park, probably the scene 
of the poaching episode, 28, 29 

Charles I and the poet's plays, 
345; his copy of the Second 
Folio, 327 

Charles II, his copy of the Second 
Folio, 327 

Chateaubriand, 366 

Chatelain, Chevalier de, rendering 
of Hamlet by, 368 

Chaucer, the story of 'Lucrece' in 
his 'Legend of Good Women,' 
80; hints in his 'Knight's Tale' 
for Midsummer Night's Dream, 
166; the plot of Troilus and 
Cressida taken from his 'Troilus 
and Cresseid,' 235; plot of The 
Two Noble Kinsmen drawn from 
his 'Knight's Tale,' 269 
' Chenier, Marie-Joseph, sides with 
Voltaire in the Shakespearean con- 
troversy in France, 366 

Chester, Robert, his 'Love's Mar- 
tyr,' 190, ic)i n 

Chettle, Henry, the publisher, his 
description of Shakespeare as an 
actor, 44; 49 n; his apology for 



COLERIDGE 

Greene's attack on Shakespeare, 
60, 233; 286; appeals to Shake- 
speare to write an elegy on Queen 
Elizabeth, 238 

Chetwynde, Peter, publisher, 328 

Chiswell, R., 328 

'Chloris,' title of William Smith's 
collection of sonnets, 453 and n 4 

Chronology of Shakespeare's plays: 
49-59, 60, 65-75; partly deter- 
mined by subject-matter and 
metre, 49-51; 166 seq^., 214 seg., 
243 seq., 257 seq. 

Churchyard, Thomas, his Fantas- 
ticall Monarcho's Epitaph, 52 n; 
calls Barnes 'Petrarch's scholar,' 

.137 
Gibber, CoUey, 351 
Gibber, Mrs., 352 
Gibber, Theophilus, the reputed 

compiler of 'Lives of the Poets,' 

33 and 34 w 
Cinthio, the 'Hecatommithi' of, 

Shakespeare's indebtedness to, 

15, 54, 244; his tragedy, Epitia, 

Clark, Mr. W. G., 341 . , 

Clement, Nicolas, criticism of the 
poet by, 365 

Cleopatra: the poet's allusion to 
her part being played by a boy, 
39 w 3 ; compared with the ' dark 
lady' of the 'Sonnets,' 128; her 
character, 254 

Clive, Mrs., 352 

Clopton, ■ Sir Hugh, the former 
owner of New Place, 200 

Clopton, Sir John, 292 

Clytemnestra, resemblance between 
the characters of Lady Macbeth 
and, 14 w 

Cobham, Henry Brooke, eighth 
Lord, 174 

'Ccelia,' title of Percy's collection 
of sonnets, 451 

'Goelica,' title of Fulke Greville's 
collection of poems, 10 1 « 

Cokain, Sir Aston, lines on Shake- 
speare and Wincot ale by, 170 

Coleridge, S. T., on the style of 
Antony and Cleopatra, 255; on 
The Tivo Noble Kinsmen, 268; 
representative of the aesthetic 



INDEX 



469 



COLLIER 

school, 349; on Edmund Kean, 

354; 381 
Collier, John Payne, includes Mu- 
cedorus in his edition of Shake- 
speare, 76; his reprint of Dray- 
ton's sonnets, 114 n; his forgeries 
in the 'Perkins Folio,' 327 and 
w 3, 340 w 2; 7,2,T„ 349, 378; his 
other forgeries (Appendix i), 

^ 383-5 

Collins, Mr. Churton, 332 w i 

Colling, Francis, Shakespeare's soli- 
citor, 280, 282 

Collins, Rev. John, 336 

Colte, Sir Henry, 426 n 

Combe, John, bequest left to the 
poet by, 278; lines written upon 
his money-lending, 278 w 2 

Combe, Thomas, legacy of the 
poet to, 285 

Combe, William, his attempt to 
enclose common land at Strat- 
ford, 278-9 

Comedy of Errors: the plot drawn 
from Plautus, 16, 55; date of 
publication, 55; allusion to the 
civil war in France, 55; possibly 
founded on The Historie of 
Error, 55; performed in the hall 
of Gray's Inn 1594, 74. For edi- 
tions see Section xix (Biblio- 
graphy), 311-41 

' Complainte of Rosamond,' 

Daniel's parallelisms in Romeo 
and Juliet with, 57; its topic 
and metre reflected in 'Lucrece,' 
80, 81 and n i, 447 

Concordances to Shakespeare, 385 
and n 

Condell, Henry, actor and a life- 
long friend of Shakespeare, 37, 
209, 210, .273; the poet's bequest 
to him, 285; signs dedication of 
First Folio, 315, 318 

Confessio Amantis, Gower's, 253 

Conspiracie of Duke Biron, The, 
52 n 

Constable, Henry, piratical publi- 
cation of the sonnets of, 92 n; 
followed Desportes in naming 
his collection of sonnets ' Diana,' 
108, 447 ; dedicatory sonnets, 456 ; 
religious sonnets, 456 



CURTAIN 

Contention betwixt the two famous 
houses of Yorke and Lancaster, 
first part of the, 6 1 

'Contr' Amours,' Jodelie's, parody 
of the vituperative sonnet in, 126 
and n 

Cooke, Sir Anthony, 452 

Cooke, George Frederick, actor, 354 

Coral, comparison of lips with, 122 
and n 2 

Coriolanus : date of first publica- 
tion, 255; derived from North's 
'Plutarch,' 255; literal reproduc- 
tion of the text of Plutarch, 
255 and n; originality of the 
humorous scenes, 256; date of 
composition, 256; general cha- 
racteristics, 256. For editions 
see Section xix (Bibliography), 
311-41 

'Coronet for his mistress Philo- 
sophy, A,' by Chapman, no 

Coryat, 'Odcombian Banquet' by, 
412 

Cotes, Thomas, printer, 327 

Cotswolds, the, Shakespeare's allu- 
sion to, 173 

Court, the, Shakespeare's relations 
with, 85, 87, 238, 239-41, cf. 
260 n, 263 n, 264 n i, 272 

Cowden- Clarke, Mrs., 380 

Cowley, actor, 216 

'Crabbed age and youth,' &c., 
189 w 

Craig, Mr. W. J., 341 

Creede, Thomas, 61, 66 n; draft of 
the Merry Wives of Windsor 
printed by, 178; draft of Henry V 
printed by, 179; fraudulently 
assigns plays to Shakespeare, 
186-7 

Cromwell, History of Thomas, 
Lord, 328 

'Cryptogram, The Great,' 388 

Cupid, Shakespeare's addresses to, 
compared with the invocations 
of Sidney, Drayton, Lyly, and 
others, iot n 

Curtain Theatre, Moorfields, one of 
the only two theatres existing in 
London at the period of Shake- 
speare's arrival, Tii^ 37; the scene 
of some of the poet's perfor- 



4^7o 



WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 



CUSHMAN 

mances, 38; closed at the period 
of the Civil War, 38; 241 n 2 

Cushman, Charlotte, 358 

Cust, Mr. Lionel, 301 n 

Cymbeline: sources of plot, 258; 
introduction of Calvinistic terms, 
259 and n; Imogen, 259; com- 
parison with As You Like It, 
259; Dr. Forman's note on its 
performance, 259. For editions 
see Section xix (Bibliography), 
311-41 

'Cynthia,' Barnfield's, adulation of 
Queen Elizabeth in, 141 n, 451 

'Cynthia,' Ralegh's, extravagant 
apostrophe to Queen Elizabeth 
in, 141 n 

Cynthia's Revels, performed at 
Blackfriars Theatre, 222 

Cyrano de Bergerac, plagiarisms of 
Shakespeare by, 364 



'Daiphantus,' allusion to the poet 
in Scoloker's, 286 

Daniel, Samuel, parallelisms in 
Romeo and Jtiliet with his 'Com- 
plainte of Rosamond,' 57; the 
topic and metre of the 'Com- 
plainte of Rosamond' reflected 
in ' Lucrece,' 80, 81 and n 1 ; feign- 
ing old age, 90 n; his sonnet 
(xlix) on Sleep, 105; admits 
plagiarism of Petrarch in his 
'Delia,' 105 n 4; followed Mau- 
rice Seve in naming his collec- 
tion of sonnets, 108, 446; claims 
immortality for his sonnets, 119; 
his prefatory sonnet in 'Delia,' 

. 134, 445; celebrates in verse 
Southampton's release from 
prison, 153, 404; his indebted- 
ness to Desportes, 446, and to 
De Baif and Pierre de Brach, 
447 ; popularity of his sonnets, 447 

Danish, translations of Shake- 
speare in, 371 

Danter, John, prints surreptitiously 
Romeo and Juliet, 57; Titus 
Andronicus entered at Stationers' 
Hall by, 69 

Daurat (formerly Dinemandy), 
Jean, one of 'La Pleiade,' 459 



DELIA 

D'Avenant, John, keeps the Crown 

Inn, Oxford, 274 
D'Avenant, Sir William, relates the 
story of Shakespeare holding 
horses outside playhouses, 34; 
on the story of Southampton's 
gift to Shakespeare, 130, 390; a 
letter of King James to the poet 
once in his possession, 239; 
Shakespeare's alleged paternity 

of; 274, 344 

Davies, Archdeacon, vicar of Sa- 
perton, on Shakespeare's 'un- 
luckiness' in poaching, 28; on 
'Justice Clodpate' (Justice Shal- 
low), 30; 378 

Davies, John, of Hereford, his 
allusion to the parts played by 
Shakespeare, 45; celebrates in 
verse Southampton's release from 
prison, 153, 404; his 'Wittes 
Pilgrimage,' 455; sonnets to pa- 
trons, 456 n 

Davies, Sir John: his 'gulling son- 
nets,' a satire , on conventional 
sonnetteering, no, in and n i, 
132 n, 451, 452; his apostrophe 
to Queen Elizabeth, 141 n; 282 

Davison, Francis, his translation of 
Petrarch's sonnet, 105 n; dedi- 
cation of his 'Poetical Rhapsody' 
to the Earl of Pembroke, 430 

Death-mask, the Kesselstadt, 307, 
308 n I 

'Decameron,' the, indebtedness of 
Shakespeare to, 167, 258, 260 
and n 3 

Dedications, 408-17 

'Dedicatory' sonnets, of Shake- 
speare, 129 seq.; of other Eliza- 
bethan poets, 142 n 2, 145, 146 

Defence of Cony-Catching, 48 n 

Dekker, Thomas, 49 n; the quar- 
rel with Ben Jonson, 222-6, 
^iZ'i 237 n\ on King James's 
entry into London, 241; his 
song 'Oh, sweet content' an 
echo of Barnes's 'Ah, sweet Con- 
tent,' 449 n I 

'Delia,' title of Daniel's collection 
of sonnets, 108, 122 w 2, 133, 446, 
450. See also under Daniel, 
Samuel 



INDEX 



471 



DELIE 

'Delie,' sonnets by Seve entitled, 

Delius, Nikolaus, edition of Shake- 
speare by, 339; studies of the 
text and metre of the poet by, 

Dennis, John, on the Merry Wives 
of Windsor, 177-8; his tribute 
to the poet, 34S 

Derby, Ferdinando Stanley (Lord 
Strange), Earl of, his patronage of 
actors, 36; performances by his 
company, 58, 62, 68, 77; Spen- 
ser's bestowal of the tide of 
'Amyntas' on, 401 w 2 

Derby, William Stanley, Earl of, 
166 

Desmond, Earl of, Ben Jonson's 
apostrophe to the, 144 

Desportes, Philippe, his sonnet on 
Sleep, 105 and 446; plagiarised 
by Drayton and others, 105 and 
n 4, 445 sea.; plagiarised indi- 
rectly by Shakespeare, 114, 115 »; 
his claim for the immortality of 
verse, 117 and 118 n i; Daniel's 
indebtedness to bim, 448, 449, 
459, 460, 461 n 

Deutsche Shakespeare- Gesellschaft, 

X.381 

Devnent familv, the, stage repre- 
sentation oi Shakespeare by, 363 

Di^na, George de Montemayor's, 
and Two Gentlemen of Verona, 
54; translations of, 54 

'Diana' the title of Constable's 
collection of sonnets, 92 n, 100 n, 
108, 447 

Diderot, opposition to Voltaire's 
strictures by, 366 

•Diella,'_ sonnets by *R. L.' [Rich- 
ard Linche], 453 

Digges, Leonard, on the superior 
popularity of Julius Ccesar to 
Jonson's Catiline, 227 n; com- 
mendatory verses on the poet, 
285 n 2, 312, 318; on the poet's 
popularity, 344 

'Don Quixote' and the lost play 
Cardenio, 267 

Doncaster, the name of Shakespeare 
at, I 

Donne, Dr. John, his poetic ad- 



DRUMMOND 

dresses to the Countess of Bed- 
ford, 142 n 2; expression of 
'love' in his 'Verse Letters,' 
145; his anecdote about Shake- 
speare and Jonson, 183 

Donnelly, Mr. Ignatius, 388 

Dorell, Hadrian, writer of the pre- 
face to the story of 'Avisa,' 
161 

Double Falsehood, or the Distrest 
Lovers, 267, 268 and n i 

Douce, Francis, 380 

Dowdall, John, 378 

Dowden, Professor, 349, 432 n, 380, 
381 

Drake, Nathan, 378 

Drayton, Michael, 63; feigning old 
age in his sonnets, 90 n; his in- 
vocations to Cupid, loi n; pla- 
giarisms in his sonnets, 107 and 
n 2, 450; follows Claude de Pon- 
toux in naming his heroine 'Idea,' 
108, 109 n i; his admission of 
insincerity in his sonnets, 109; 
Shakespeare's indebtedness to his 
sonnets, 114 n; claims immor- 
tality for his sonnets, 119; use 
of the word 'love,' 131 n; title 
of 'Hymn' given to some of his 
poems, 139 «; identified by some 
as the 'rival poet,' 140; adula- 
tion in his sonnets, 142 n 2 ; 
Shakespeare's Sonnet cxliv 
adapted from, 157 n 2; enter- 
tained by Shakespeare at New 
Place, Stratford, 280; 443 n 2; 
greetings to his patron in his 
works, 414 

Droeshout, Martin, engraver of the 
portrait in the First Folio, 298- 
302 ; his uncle of the same name, 
a painter, 301 

Droitwich, native place of John 
Heming, one of Shakespeare's 
actor-friends, ^2 n 

Drummond, William, of Hawthorn- 
den, his translations of Petrarch's 
sonnets, 108 n, 115 n; Italian 
origin of many of his love- 
sonnets, 108 and n; translation 
of a vituperative sonnet from 
Marino, 126 n i; translation of 
a sonnet by Tasso, 156 n; two 



472 



WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 



DRYDEN 

self-reproachful sonnets by him, 

156 n. See also (Appendix), 455 

and n i 
Dryden, a criticism of the poet's 

work by, 346; presented with 

a copy of the Chandos portrait 

of the poet, 346; 377 
Ducis, Jean-Fran fois, adaptations 

of the poet for the French stage 

by, 366, 370 
Dugdale, Gilbert, 239 w 
Dulwich, manor of, purchased by 

Edward Alley n, 211, 239 n i 
Dumain, Lord, in Love's Labour's 

Lost, 52 « 
Dumas, Alexandre, adaptation of 

Hamlet by, 368 
Duport, Paul, repeats Voltaire's 

censure, 367 
Dyce, Alexander, 268 ;^ i ; on The 

Two Noble Kinsmen, 268; his 

edition of Shakespeare, 338 



EccLESiASTES, Book of, poetical 
versions of, 457 and n i 

Eden, translation of Magellan's 
'Voyage to the South Pole' by, 
262 

Edgar, Eleazar, publisher, 406 

Editions of Shakespeare's works. 
See under Quarto and Folio 

Editors of Shakespeare, in the 
eighteenth century, 328-38; in 
the nineteenth century, 338-40; 
of variorum editions, 340, 341 

Education of Shakespeare : the 
poet's masters at Stratford 
Grammar School, 13; his in- 
struction in Latin, 13; no proof 
that he studied the Greek trage- 
dians, 14 n; alleged knowledge 
of the classics and of Italian and 
French literature, 13, 14, 15, 16; 
study of the Bible in his school- 
days, 17, 18, and n i; removal 
from school, 18 

Edward II, Marlowe's, Richard II 
suggested by, 67 

Edward III, a play of uncertain 
authorship, 75; quotation from 
one of Shakespeare's sonnets, 76, 
93 and n 2 



EVANS 

Edwardes, Richard, author of the 
lost play Pal(znion and Arcyte, 
269 

Edwards, Thomas, 'Canons of 
Criticism' of, 334 

Eld, George, prmter, 94, 187, 415 
n 2, 417, 418 

Elizabeth, Princess, marriage of, 
performance of The Tempest, &c. 
at. 263, 267, 271, 273 

Elizabeth, Queen: her visit to 
Kenilworth, 18; Shakespeare 
and other actors play before her, 
44, 74, 85 ; shows the poet special 
favour, 85, 86; her enthusiasm for 
Falstaff, 86, 177; extravagant 
compliments to her, 141; called 
'Cynthia' by the poets, 152; 
elegies on her, 152, 153; com- 
pliment to her in Midsummer 
Night's Dream, 166; her objec- 
tions to Richard II, 182; death, 
238; her imprisonment of South- 
ampton, 396 

Elizabethan Stage Society, 74 ?J i, 
217 n 2 

Elton, Mr. Charles, Q.C., on the 
dower of the poet's widow, 
283 n; 380^ 

Elze, Friedrich Karl, 'Life of 
Shakespeare' by, 380; Shake- 
speare studies of, 362 

'Emaricdulfe,' sonnets by 'E. C.,' 

157 ^^ I. 452 

Endymion, Lyly's, and Lovers 
Labour's Lost, 64 

Error. Historie of, and Comedy of 
Errors, 55 

Eschenburg, Johann Joachim, com- 
pletes Wieland's German prose 
translation of Shakespeare, 360 

Essex, Robert Devereux, second 
Earl of, company of actors under 
the patronage of, 34; an en- 
thusiastic reception predicted for 
him in London in Henry V, 
181; trial and execution, 182; 
his relations with the Earl of 
Southampton, 392, 393, 396, 399 

Euphues, Lyly's, Polonius's advice 
to Laertes borrowed from, 65 n 

Euripides, Andromache of, 14. n 

Evans, Sir Hugh, quotes Latin 



INDEX 



473 



EVELYN 

phrases, 1 5 ; sings snatches of 
Marlowe's 'Come live with me 
and be my love,' 67 

Evelyn, John, on the change of 
taste regarding the drama, 345 n 2 

Every Man in his Humour, Shake- 
speare takes a part in the per- 
formance of, 45, 183; prohibition 
on its publication^ 214-15 



FAIRS EM, a play of doubtful 

authorship, 76 
Falstaff, Queen Elizabeth's en- 
thusiasm for, 86, 177; named 
originally 'Sir John Oldcastle,' 
174; objections raised to the 
name, 170; the attraction of his 
personality, 174; his last mo- 
ments, 180; letter from the 
Countess of Southampton on, 
399 and n i 
Farmer, Dr. Richard, on Shake- 
speare's education, 15, 16; 378 
Farmer, Mr. John S., 402 n i, 434 ^ 
'Farmer MS., the_ Dr.,' Davies's 

'gulling sonnets' in, iii w i 
Fastolf, Sir John, 175 
Faucit, Helen. See Martin, Lady 
Felix and Philomena, History of, 54 
'Fidessa,' Griffin's, 189 n, 447, 453 
Field, Henry, father of the London 

printer, 193 
Field, Richard, a friend of Shake- 
speare, 33; apprenticed to the 
London printer, Thomas Vau- 
troUier, 33; his association with 
the poet, 33; publishes "Venus 
and Adonis,' 78, 412, and 
'Lucrece,' 80, 412 
Finnish, translations of Shakespeare 

in, 371 

Fisher, Mr. Clement, 170 

Fitton, Mary, and the 'dark lady,' 
127 n, 406 w, 431 ;* 

Fleay, Mr. F. G., metrical tables 
by, 50 #; on Shakespeare's and 
Drayton's sonnets, 114 ??; 379 

Fletcher, Giles, on Time, 81 n 2; 
his 'imitation' of other poets, 
107-8; admits insincerity in his 
sonnets, 109; his 'Licia,' 449 

Fletcher, John, 188, 191 n, 367; 



FRANCE 

collaborates with Shakespeare in 
The Two Noble Kinsmen and 
Henry VIII, 268, 271 

Fletcher, Lawrence, actor, takes 
a theatrical company to Scotland, 
42 and n i, 239 

Florio, John, and Holof ernes, $2 n, 
88 n; the sonnet prefixed to his 
'Second Frutes,' 88 and n; 
Southampton's protege, 88 n; 
his translation of Montaigne's 
'Essays,' 88 n, 262 ; Shakespeare's 
signature in the British Museum 
copy of Florio' s ' Montaigne,' 
296 ; his ' Worlde of Wordes,' 88 n, 
403 ; his praise of Southampton, 
135 (and Appendix iv); South- 
ampton's Italian tutor, 392, 400 

Folio, the First, 1623: editor's note 
as to the ease with which the 
poet wrote, 47 ; the syndicate for 
its production, 315, 316; its con- 
tents, 317, 318; prefatory matter, 
318, 319; value of the text, 319; 
order of the plays, 319, 320; the 
typography, 320; unique copies, 
320-26; the Sheldon copy, 321 
and n 3, 322; Sibthorp copy, 
323, 324 and »; number of extant 
copies, 326; Jaggard's presenta- 
tion copy, 323-4 and n-, reprints, 
327; the 'Daniel' copy, 326; 
dedicated to the Earl of Pem- 
broke, 428 

Folio, the Second, 327 

Folio, the Third, 327, 328 

Folio, the Fourth, 328 

Ford, John, similarity of theme 
between a song in his Broken 
Heart and Shakespeare's Sonnet 
cxxvi, 101 n 

Forgeries in the 'Perkins Folio,' 
327 and n 3 

Forgeries, Shakespearean (Ap- 
pendix ii), 381-5; of John 
Jordan, 382; of the Irelands, 
382 ; promulgated by John Payne 
Collier and others, 383-5 

Forman, Dr. Simon, 248, 259 

Forrest, Edwin, American actor, 358 

Fortune Theatre, 220, 241 n i 

France, versions and criticisms of 
Shakespeare in, 364-8; stage 



474 



WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 



FRAUNCE 

representation of the poet in, 
368, 369; bibliographical note 
on the sonnet in (1550-1600), 
(Appendix x), 458-61 

Fraunce, Abraham, 401 n 2 

Freiligrath, Ferdinand von, German 
translation of Shakespeare by, 360 

French, the poet's acquaintance 
with, 15 

French, George Russell, 378 

'Freyndon' (or Frittenden), i 

Friendship, sonnets of, Shake- 
speare's, 140, 142-51 

Frittenden, Kent. See Freyndon 

Fulbroke Park and the poaching 
episode, 29 

Fuller, Thomas, allusion in his 
'Worthies' to Sir John Fastolf, 
175; on the *wit combats' be- 
tween Shakespeare and Jonson, 
184; the first biographer of the 
poet, 377 

Fulman, Rev. W., 378 

Furness, Mr. H. H., his 'New 
Variorum' edition of Shake- 
speare, 338, 358 

Furness, Mrs. H. H., 380 

Furnivall, Dr. F. J., 50 n, 302 n, 
341, 35°, 380 

Gale, Dunstan, 413 

Gallup, Mrs., 389 

Ganymede, Barnfield's sonnets to, 
451 and n 4 

Garnett, Henry, the Jesuit, pro- 
bably alluded to in Macbeth, 247 

Garrick, David, 331, 352, 353-5 

Gascoigne, George, his definition of 
a sonnet, 99 w 2; his Supposes, 
168 

Gastrell, Rev. Francis, 292 

Gates, Sir Thomas, 261 

Germany, Shakespearean represen- 
tations in, 356, 363; translations 
of the poet's works and criticisms 
in, 358-64; Shakespeare Society 

in, 2>^3 

Gervinus, 'Commentaries' by, 50 
n, 363 

'Gesta Romanorum' and the Mer- 
chant of Venice, 70 

Ghost in Hamlet, the, played by 
Shakespeare, 45 



gray's 

Gilchrist, Octavius, 378 

Gildon, Charles, on the rapid pro- 
duction of the Merry Wives of 
Windsor, 177; on the dispute 
at Eton as to the supremacy of 
Shakespeare as a poet, 344 n 

Giovanni (Fiorentino), Ser, Shake- 
speare's indebtedness to his 'II 
Pecorone,' 15, 70, 178 

Giuletta, La, by Luigi da Porto, 
56 w _ 

'Globe' edition of Shakespeare, 341 

Globe Theatre: built in 1599, 38, 
203, 207; described by Shake- 
speare, 38, cf. 179; mainly occu- 
pied by the poet's companyafter 
1599, 38; profits shared by Shake- 
speare, 38, 203, 209, 210; the 
leading London theatre, 38; re- 
vival of Richard II at, 182; 
litigation of Burbage's heirs, 207; 
prices of admission, 208; annual 
receipts, 208; performance of 
The Winter's Tale, 259; its de- 
struction by fire, 269, 270 n; the 
new building, 269; Shakespeare's 
disposal of his shares, 278 

Goddard, William, Satirycall Dia- 
logue, 434 

Goethe, criticism and adaptation of 
Shakespeare by, 361 

Golding, Arthur, his English ver- 
sion of the 'Metamorphoses,' 
16, 120 n 2, 166, 262 

Gollancz, Mr. Israel, 229 n 2, 341 

Googe, Barnabe, his use of the 
word 'sonnet,' 443 n 2 

Gosson, Stephen, his 'Schoole of 
Abuse,' 70 

Gottsched, J. C, denunciation of 
Shakespeare by, 359 

Gounod, opera of Romeo and 
Juliet by, 369 

Gower, John, represented by the 
speaker of the prologues in 
Pericles, 253; his 'Confessio 
Amantis,' 253 

Gower, Lord Ronald, 309 

Grammaticus, Saxo, 229 

Grave, Shakespeare's, 281 

Gray's Inn Hall, performance of 
The Comedy of Errors in, 74 
and n 



INDEX 



475 



GREEK 

Greek, Shakespeare's alleged ac- 
quaintance with, 14 and n, 16 

Green, C. F., 380 

Greene, Robert, charged with sell- 
ing the same play to two com- 
panies, 48 n; his attack on 
Shakespeare, 59; his publisher's 
apology, 60; his share in the ori- 
ginal draft of Henry VI, 61; 
his influence on Shakespeare, 62 ; 
describes a meeting with a player, 
205 ; The Winter's Tale founded 
on his Pandosio, 260; dedicatory 
greetings in his works, 414 

Greene, Thomas, actor at the Red 
Bull Theatre, 32 ;^ 2. 

Greene, Thomas ('alias Shake- 
speare') a tenant of New Place, 
and Shakespeare's legal adviser, 
202, 213, 279, 280 and n 

Greenwich Palace, Shakespeare and 
other actors play before Queen 
Elizabeth at, 44, 45 n i, 74, 85, 
86 

Greet, hamlet in Gloucestershire, 
identical with the 'Greece' in the 
Taming of The Shrew, 171 and n 

Grendon, near Oxford, Shake- 
speare's alleged sojourn there, 32 

Greville, Sir Fulke, complains of the 
circulation of uncorrected manu- 
script copies of the 'Arcadia,' 
92 n; invocations to Cupid in his 
collection, ' Caelica,' loi n; his 
•Sonnets,' 454, 455 

Grifi&n, Bartholomew, 189 n; pla- 
giarises Daniel, 447, 453 

Griggs, Mr. W., 314 w 

Grimm, Baron, recognition of 
Shakespeare's greatness by, 367 
and n i 

* Groats- worth of Wit,' Greene's 
pamphlet containing his attack 
on Shakespeare, 59 

Guizot, Franfois, revision of Le 
Tourneur's translation by, 367 

'Gulling sonnets,' Sir John Davies's, 
no. III, 451, 452; Shakespeare's 
Sonnet xxvi parodied in, 132 n 



•H., Mr. W.,' 'patron' of Thorpe's 
pirated issue of the 'Sonnets,' 96; 



HAMLET 

identified with William Hall, 
96, 418, 419; his publication of 
Southwell's 'A Foure-fould Medi- 
tation,' 96; erroneously said to 
indicate the Earl of Pembroke, 
98, 422-6; improbability of the 
suggestion that a William Hughes 
was indicated, 97 n; 'W. H.'s' 
true relations with Thomas 
Thorpe, 406-21 

Hacket, Marian and Cicely, in the 
Taming of The Shrew, 169-70 

Hales, John (of Eton), on the supe- 
riority of Shakespeare to all other 
poets, 344 and n 

Hales, Prof. J. W., 39 

Hall, Elizabeth, the poet's grand- 
daughter, 199, 275, 284; her 
first marriage to Thomas Nash, 
and her second marriage to 
John Barnard (or Bernard), 
291; her death and will, 291, 
292 

Hall, Dr. John, the poet's son-in- 
law, 275, 277, 282, 290 

Hall, Mrs. Susanna, the poet's 
elder daughter, 199, 212, 275; 
inherits the chief part of the 
poet's estate, 284; 290; her 
death, her 'witty' disposition, 
290 

Hall, William (i), on the inscription 
over the poet's grave, 282 and n, 

Hall, William (2), see 'H., Mr. W.' 
Halliwell-Phillipps, James Orchard, 
the indenture of the poet's pro- 
perty in Blackfriars in the col- 
lection of, 276 n; his edition of 
Shakespeare, 341, 327; his great 
labours on Shakespeare's bio- 
graphy, 349, 379, 380 
Hamlet: parallelisms in the Electra 
of Sophocles, the Andromache of 
Euripides, and the Persce of 
yEschylus, 14 n; Polonius's ad- 
vice to Laertes borrowed from 
Lyly's Euphues, 65 n; allusion 
to boy- actors, 221 n 2, 223 and 
n I, 224; date of production, 
228; previous popularity of the 
story on the stage, 228-9 ^^'^ ^j 
sources drawn upon by the poet, 



476 



WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 



HAMMER 

229; success of Burbage in 
the title-part, 230; the problem 
of its publication, 230-1 ; the 
three versions, 231-2; Theo- 
bald's emendations, 232; its 
world-wide popularity, 232; the 
longest of all the poet's plays, 233 ; 
the humorous element, 233; 
its central interest, 233. For 
editions see Section xix (Biblio- 
graphy), 311-41 

Hanmer, Sir Thomas, 232; his 
edition of Shakespeare, 334 

Harington, Sir John, translates 
Ariosto, 215-16 

Harington, Lucy, her marriage 
to the third Earl of Bedford, 
166 

Harness, William, 340 

Harrison, John, publisher of 'Lu- 
crece,' 80 

Harsnet, 'Declaration of Popish 
Impostures' by, 250 

Hart family, the, and the poet's 
reputed birthplace, 8 

Hart, Joan, Shakespeare's sister, 8; 
his bequest to her, 285; her three 
sons, 285, 292 

Hart, John, 292 

Hart, Joseph C., 387 

Harvey, Gabriel, bestows on Spenser 
the title of 'an English Petrarch,' 
105; justifies the imitation of 
Petrarch, 105 n 4; his parody of 
sonnetteering, no, 125 and n\ 
his advice to Barnes, 137; his 
'Four Letters and certain Son- 
nets,' 456 

Hathaway, Anne. See Shakespeare, 
Anne 

Hathaway, Catherine, sister of Anne 
Hathaway, 20 

Hathaway, Joan, mother of Anne 
Hathaway, 19 

Hathaway, Richard, marriage of 
his daughter Anne (or Agnes) to 
the poet, 19, 20-23; his position 
as a yeoman, 19, 20; his will, 20 

Haughton, William, 49 «, 434 

Hawkins, Richard, publisher, 327 

Hawthorne, Nathaniel, 388 

Hazlitt, William, and Shakespearean 
criticism, 349; 380, 381 



HENRY 

Healey, John, 416, 419 n 2, 424, 425 

'Hecatommithi,' Cinthio's, Shake- 
speare's indebtedness to, 15, 54, 
244 

Heine, studies of Shakespeare's 
heroines by, 361 

Helena in All's Well that Ends 
Well, 167 

Heming, John (actor-friend of 
Shakespeare), wrongly claimed as 
a native of Stratford, 32 n 2, 36, 
209, 210, 273; the poet's bequest 
to, 285; signs dedication of First 
Folio, 315, 318 

Henderson, John, actor, 353 

Heneage, Sir Thomas, 391 n^ 

Henley-in-Arden, 4 

Henrietta Maria, Queen, billeted 
on Mrs. Hall (the poet's daughter) 
at Stratford, 290 

Henry /F (parts i and ii): passage 
ridiculing the affectations of 
Euphues, 65 w; sources drawn 
upon, 172; Justice Shallow, 30, 
173; references to persons and 
districts familiar to the poet, 
172, 173; the characters, 
173-6. For editions see Sec- 
tion xix (Bibliography), 311- 

41 

Henry V, The Famous Victories of, 
the groundwork of Henry IV and 
of Henry V, 172, 180 

Henry V : French dialogues, 15; 
disdainful allusion to sonnet- 
teering, 112; date of production, 
179; imperfect drafts of the 
play, 179; First Folio version of 
1623, 180; the comic characters, 
180 ; the victor}' of Agincourt, 180 ; 
the poet's final experiment in the 
dramatisation of English history, 
181; the allusions to the Earl 
of Essex, 181. For editions 
see Section xix (Bibliography), 
311-41 

Henry VI (pt. i): performed at 
the Rose Theatre in 1592, 58; 
Nash's remarks on, 58, 59; first 
publication, 60; contains only a 
slight impress of the poet's style, 
61; performed by Lord Strange' s 
men, 61 



INDEX 



477 



HENRY 

Henry VI (pt. ii): parallel in the 
CEdipus Coloneus of Sophocles 
with a passage in, 14 n; publica- 
tion of a first draft with the title 
of The First part of the Contention 
betwixt the two famous Houses of 
Yorke and Lancaster^ 61; per- 
formed by Lord Strange's men, 
62 ; revision of the play, 62 ; the 
poet's coadjutors in the revision, 
62-3 

Henry VI (pt. iii): performed by 
a company other than the poet's 
own, 37; performed in the autumn 
of 1592, 58; publication of a 
first draft of the play under the 
title of The True Tragedie of 
Richard, Duke of Yorke, dfc, 
61 ; performed by Lord Pem- 
broke's men, 37, 61; partly re- 
modelled, 62; the poet's coad- 
jutors in the revision, 62-3. For 
editions see Section xix (Biblio- 
graphy), 31 1-4 I 

Henry VIII, 181; attributed to 
Shakespeare and Fletcher, 268; 
noticed by Sir Henry Wotton, 
270; first publication, 271; the 
portions that can confidently be 
assigned to Shakespeare, 271; 
uncertain authorship of Wolsey's 
farewell to Cromwell, 271; 
Fletcher's share, 271. For editions 
see Section xix (Bibliography), 
311-41 

Henryson, Robert, 236 

Henslowe, Philip, erects the Rose 
Theatre, 37; bribes a publisher 
to abandon the publication of 
Patient Grissell, 4g n; 186 n, 
233, 269 

'Heptameron of Civil Discourses,' 
Whetstone's, 245 

'Herbert, Mr. William,' his alleged 
identity with 'Mr. W. H.' (Ap- 
pendix vi), 422-26 

Herder, Johann Gottfried, 360 

'Hero and Leander,' Marlowe's, 
quotation in As You Like It 
from, 67 

Herringman, H., 328 

Hervey, Sir William, 391 w 3 

Hess, J. R., 359 



HUNSDON 

Heyse, Paul, German translation of 
Shakespeare by, 360 

Heywood, Thomas, his allusion to 
the dislike of actors to the publi- 
cation of plays, 49 n; his poems 
pirated in the 'Passionate Pil- 
grim,' 189, 311; 344 

Hill, John, marriage of his widow, 
Agnes or Anne, to Robert Arden, 
6 

Holinshed's 'Chronicles,' mate- 
rials taken by Shakespeare from, 
17, 48, 65, 67, 172, 247, 250, 
258 

Holland, translations of Shake- 
speare in, 370 

Holland, Hugh, 318 

Holmes, Nathaniel, 388 

Holmes, William, bookseller, 419 
n I 

Holofernes, quotes Latin phrases 
from Lily's grammar, 15 ; ground- 
less assumption that he is a carica- 
ture of Florio, 52 n, 88 n 

Horace, his claim for the immor- 
tality of verse, 118 and n 1, 120 n 

Hotspur, 173, 174 

Howard of Effingham, the Lord 
Admiral, Charles, Lord, his com- 
pany of actors, 36; its short 
alliance with Shakespeare's com- 
pany, 38; Spenser's sonnet to, 
144 

Hudson, Rev. H. N., 341 

Hughes, Mrs. Margaret, plays 
female parts in the place of boys, 
351 

Hughes, William, and 'Mr. W. 
H.,' 97 n 

Hugo, Frangois Victor, translation 
of Shakespeare by, 368 

Hugo, Victor, 368 

Humourous Day's Mirth, An, 52 n 

Hungary, translations and per- 
formances of Shakespeare in, 

371 

Hunsdon (Lord Chamberlain), 
George Carey, second Lord, his 
company of players, 36; promo- 
tion of the company to be the 
King's players on the accession 
of King James, 36 

Hunsdon (Lord Chamberlain), 



478 



WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 



HUNT 

Henry Carey, first Lord, his 
company of players, 36; Shake- 
speare a member of this com- 
pany, 37 

Hunt, Simon, master of Stratford 
Grammar School, 13 

Hunter, Rev. Joseph, 349, 378, 
422 n 

*Huon of Bordeaux,' hints for the 
story of Oberon from, 166 

'Hymn,' use of the word as the 
title of poems, 137, 138, 139 n 

'Hymnes of Astrasa,' Sir John 
Davies's, 456 



'Idea,' title of Drayton's collection 
of sonnets, 108, 109 n I, 450 

'Ignoto,' 190 

Immortality of verse, claimed by 
Shakespeare for his sonnets, 117, 
118, 119, and ?t; a common theme 
with classical and French writers, 
118 and n l; treated by Drayton 
and Daniel, 119 

Imogen, the character of, 259 

Income, Shakespeare's, 203-11 

Incomes of actors, 205, 206 and 
n 2 

India, translations and representa- 
tions of Shakespeare in, 371 

Ingannati (Gl'), its resemblance to 
Twelfth Night, 218 

Ingram, Dr., on the 'weak end- 
ings' in Shakespeare, 50 n 

Ireland forgeries, the (Appendix i), 
382 

Ireland, Samuel, on the poaching 
episode, 29 

Irishman, the only, in Shakespeare's 
dramatis personcs, 180 

Irving, Sir Henry, 356 

Italian, the poet's acquaintance 
with, 15-16, cf. 70 n 

Italy, Shakespeare's knowledge of, 
43 ; translations and perfor- 
mances of Shakespeare in, 369; 
the original home of the sonnet, 
458 n 2 ; list of sonnetteers of the 
sixteenth century in, 458 n 2 

Itinerary of Shakespeare's company 
in the provinces between 1593 
and.1614, 41 and n i 



JOHNSON 

Jaggard, Isaac, 318 

Jaggard, William, piratically inserts 
two of Shakespeare's sonnets in 
his 'Passionate Pilgrim,' 93, 189, 
311, 406, 412; prints the First 
Folio, 315, 316 

James VI of Scotland and I of 
England, his favour bestowed on 
actors, 42 n i; sonnets to, 456; 
his appreciation of Shakespeare, 
86; his accession to the English 
throne, 151, 152, 153; grants a 
license to the poet and his com- 
pany, 238; his patronage of 
Shakespeare and his company, 
240-2, 427; performances of The 
Winter's Tale and The Tempest 
before him, 259-60 and n, 263, 
264, 265 n 

James, Sir Henry, 327 

James, Dr. Richard, 175 n 2 

Jameson, Mrs., 381 

Jamyn, Amadis, 448, 459, 460, 
461 n 

Jansen, Cornelius, alleged portrait 
of Shakespeare by, 305 

Jansen or Janssen, Gerard, 286 n 

J eronimo, resemblance between 
the stories of Hamlet and, 
229 n 

Jew of Malta, Marlowe's, 71 

Jew . . . showne at the Bull, a lost 
play, 70 _ 

Jodelle, Estienne, resemblances in 
'Venus and Adonis' to a poem 
by, ']g n 2', his parody of the 
vituperative sonnet, 126 and n; 
and 'La Pleiade,' 459 

John, King, old play on, attributed 
to the poet, 188 

John, King, Shakespeare's play of, 
printed in 1623, 73; the origina- 
lity and strength of the three 
chief characters in, 73, 74. For 
editions see Section xix (Biblio- 
graphy), 3 1 1-4 1 

Johnson, Dr., his story of Shake- 
speare, 34; his edition of Shake- 
speare, 334, 335, 336; his reply 
to Voltaire, 366 

Johnson, Gerard, his monument to 
the poet in Stratford Church, 
285 



INDEX 



479 



JOHNSON 

Johnson, Robert, lyrics set to music 
by, 264 and n 

Jones, Inigo, designs scenic decora- 
tion for masques, 39 w 2 

Jonson, Ben, on Shakespeare's lack 
of exact scholarship, 16; Shake- 
speare takes part in the perform- 
ance of Every Man in his 
Humour and in Sejanus, 45 ; 
on Titus Andronicus, 68; on 
the appreciation of Shakespeare 
shown by Elizabeth and James I, 
86; on metrical artifice in son- 
nets, no n l; use of the word 
'lover,' 131 n; identified by 
some as the 'rival poet,' 140; 
his 'dedicatory' sonnets, 142 n 
2; his apostrophe of the Earl of 
Desmond, 144; relations with 
Shakespeare, 183, 184; gift of 
Shakespeare to his son, 183-4; 
share in the appendix to 'Love's 
Martyr,' 190; quarrel with Mars- 
ton and Dekker, 222-8; his 
'Poetaster,' 224, 225, 226 and n; 
allusions to him in the Return 
from Parnassus, 227, his scorn- 
ful criticism of Julius Ccesar, 227 
n; satiric allusion to A Winter's 
Tale, 260; his sneering refe- 
rence to The Tempest in Bartho- 
lomew Fair, 264; entertained by 
Shakespeare at New Place, Strat- 
ford, 280; testimony to Shake- 
speare's character, 286; his tri- 
bute to Shakespeare in the First 
Folio, 318, 326, 343; his Hue 
and Cry after Cupid, 448 n 2 ; 
Thorpe's publication of some of 
his works, 411 n 3, 418 

Jordan, John, forgeries of (Appen- 
dix I), 382, 383 

Jordan, Mrs., 355 

Jordan, Thomas, his lines on men 
playing female parts, 351 n 

Jourdain, Sylvester, 261 

'Jubilee,' Shakespeare's, 350 

Julius CcEsar : use of the word 
'lovers,' 131 n; plot drav/n from 
Plutarch, 218; date of produc- 
tion, 218; a play of the same 
title acted in 1594, 219; general 
features of the play, 219; Jon- 



L., H. 

son's hostile criticism, 227 n. 
For editions see Section xix 
(Bibliography), 311-41 
Jusserand, M. J. J., 43 n I, 
365 n i, 369 n I 

Kean, Edmund, 354, 368 

Keller, A., German translation of 
Shakespeare by, 360 

Kemble, Charles, 368 

Kemble, John Philip, 353 

Kemp, William, comedian, plays 
at Greenwich Palace, 44; 216, 226 

Kenilworth, Elizabeth's visit to, 18, 
cf. 166 

Ketzcher, N., translation into 
Russian by, 370 

Killigrew, Thomas, and the sub- 
stitution of women for boys in 
female parts, 351 

King's players, the company of, 36; 
Shakespeare one of its members, 
37; the poet's plaj'S performed 
almost exclusively by, 37; 
theatres at which it performed, 
37) 38) provincial towns which 
it visited between 1594 and 1614, 
41 and n i; King James's 
license to, 238, 239 

Kirkland, the name of Shakespeare 
at, I 

Kirkman, Francis, publisher, 188 

Knight, Charles, 340 

KnoUys, Sir William, 431 w 

Kok,' A. S., translation in Dutch 
by, 370 

Korner, J., German translation of 
Shakespeare by, 360 

Kraszewski, Polish translation 
edited by, 370 

Kreyssig, Friedrich A. T., studies 
of the poet by, 362 

Kyd, Thomas, influence of, on 
Shakespeare, 63, 229 n; and 
Titus Andronicus, 68; his 

■ Spanish Tragedy, 68, 228; and 
the story of Hamlet, 229 and n; 
Shakespeare's acquaintance with 
his work, 229 w 

'L., H.,' initials on seal attesting 
Shakespeare's autograph. See 
Lawrence, Henry 



48o 



WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 



XA HARPE 

La Harpe and the Shakespearean 
controversy in France, 366 

Labe, Louise, 461 n 

Lamb, Charles, 268, 354 

Lambarde, William, 182 

Lambert, Edmund, mortgagee of 
the Asbies property, 12, 27, 169 

Lambert, John, proposal to confer 
upon him an absolute title to the 
Asbies property, 27; John 
Shakespeare's lawsuit against, 
202 

Lane, Nicholas, a creditor of John 
Shakespeare, 193 

Langbaine, Gerard, 69, 378 

Laroche, Benjamin, translation by, 

367 

Latin, the poet's acquaintance 
with, 13, 15, 16 

'Latten,' use of the word in Shake- 
speare, 1S4 n 

'Laura,' Shakespeare's allusion to 
her as Petrarch's heroine, 112; 
title of Tofte's collection of 
sonnets, 454 

Law, the poet's knowledge of, 33 
and cf. n 2, and iii 

Lawe, Matthew, 174 w 

Lawrence, Henry, his seal beneath 
Shakespeare's autograph, 276 

Lear, King: date of composition, 
249; produced at Whitehall, 
249; Butter's imperfect editions, 
249; sources of story, 250 ;_ the 
character of the King, 250. For 
editions see Section xix (Biblio- 
graphy), 31 1-4 I 

Leblanc, The Abbe, 365 

Legal terminology in plays and 
poems of the Shakespearean 
period, 33 n 2, 446, cf. in 

Legge, Dr. Thomas, a Latin piece 
on Richard III by, 65 

Leicester, Earl of, his entertain- 
ment of Queen Elizabeth at 
Kenilworth, 18, 166; his regi- 
ment of Warwickshire youths for 
service in the Low Countries, 3 1 ; 
his company of players, 34, 36 

Leo, F. A., 363 

Leoni, Michele, Italian translation 
of the poet issued by, 369 

'Leopold' Shakspere, the, 341 



LOVE'S 

Lessing, defence of Shakespeare by, 

359 

L' Estrange, Sir Nicholas, 183 

Le Tourneur, Pierre, French prose 
translation of Shakespeare by, 367 

'Licia,' Fletcher's collection of 
sonnets called, 81 n 2, 107, 109, 
117 n 2, 449 

Linche, Richard, his sonnets en- 
titled 'Diella,' 453 

Ling, Nicholas, 230 n 

Lintot, Bernard, 239 n 2 

Locke (or Lok), Henry, sonnets 
by, 404, 456-7 

Locrine, Tragedie of, 1S16 

Lodge, Thomas, 59, 63 ; his 'Scillaes 
Metamorphosis' drawn upon by 
Shakespeare for 'Venus and 
Adonis,' 79 and n 2; his plagia- 
risms, 107 and n 3, 449 ; compari- 
son of lips with coral in 'Phillis,' 
122 n 2; his 'Rosalynde' the 
foundation of ^^ You Like It, 
216; his 'Phillis,' 433, 449 

London Prodi gall, 187, 328 

Lope de Vega dramatises the story 
of Romeo and Juliet, 56 n 

Lopez, Roderigo, Jewish physi- 
cian, 71-2 and n 

Lorkin, Rev. Thomas, on the burn- 
ing of the Globe Theatre, 270 n 

Love, treatment of, in Shakespeare's 
sonnets, loi and n, 102, 116, 117 
and n 2; in the sonnets of other 
writers, 1 09-11, 117 n 2 

'Lover' and 'love' synonymous 
with 'friend' and 'friendship' in 
Elizabethan En-^lish, 131 w 

'Lover's Complaint, A,' possibly 
written by Shakespeare, 95 

Love's Labour's Lost: Latin phrases 
in, 15; probably the poet's first 
dramatic production, 51; its plot 
not borrowed, 52; its characters, 
52 and n, 53; its revision in 1597, 
53; date of publication, 53; in- 
fluence of Lyly, 64; performed at 
Whitehall, 85-6; examples of the 
poet's first attempts at sonnetteer- 
ing, 88; scornful allusion to 
sonnetteering, in; the praise of 
'blackness,' 122, 123 and 11 2; 
performed before Anne of Den- 



INDEX 



481 



love's 

mark at Southampton's house in 
the Strand, 400. For editions 
see Section xix (Bibliography), 
311-41 
Love's Labour's Won, attributed by 
Meres to Shakespeare, 167. See 
All's Well 
'Love's Martyr, or RosaHn's Com- 
plaint,' 190, 191 n, 316 
Lowell, James Russell, 14 n, 358 
Lucian, the Timon of, 251 
'Lucrece, ' published in 1594, 80; 
Daniel's 'Complainte of Rosa- 
mond' reflected, 79, 80 and n i; 
the passage on Time elaborated 
from Watson, 81 and n 2; dedi- 
cated to the Earl of Southampton, 
81, 82, 130, 132; enthusiastic re- 
ception of, 82-3 ; quarto editions 
in the poet's lifetime, 311; post- 
humous editions, 311 
Lucy, Sir Thomas, his prosecution 
of Shakespeare for poaching, 28, 
29 ; caricatured in Justice Shallow, 

30».i79 

Luddington, 20 

Ludwig, Otto, 362 

Lydgate, 'Troy Book' of, drawn 
upon for Troilus and Cressida, 235 

Lyly, John, 61; followed by Shake- 
speare in his comedies, 63, 64; his 
addresses to Cupid, 10 1 n; his 
influence on Midsummer Night's 
Dream, 166; Mydas, 237 

Lyrics in Shakespeare's plays, 214, 
259, 264 and n 



'M. 1.,' 318. See also 'S., L M.' 
Macbeth: references to the climate 
of Inverness, 42 w 3, 43; date of 
composition, 247; the story 
drawn from Holinshed, 247 ; 
points of difference from other 
plays of the same class, 248; 
Middleton's plagiarisms, 248; 
not printed until 1623, 247; the 
shortest of the poet's tragedies, 
247; performance at the Globe, 
248. For editions see Section xix 
(Bibliography), 311-41 
Macbeth, Lady, and ^schylus's 
Clytemnestra, 14 w 

21 



MASSINGER 

Mackay, Mr. Herbert, on the dower 
of the poet's widow, 283 w 

Macklin, Charles, 353 

Macready, William Charles, 355,368 

Madden, Rt. Hon. D. H., on Shake- 
speare's knowledge of sport, 28 w; 
173 n 2, 380 

Magellan, 'Voyage to the South 
Pole' by, 262 

Magny, Olivier de, 459 

Malone, Edmund, on Shakespeare's 
first employment in the theatre, 
35; on the poet's residence, 39; 
on the date of The Tempest, 263; 
348, 349; his writings on the 
poet, 337, 338, 378 

Malvolio, 218 

Manners, Lady Bridget, 394, 395 
and n 

Manningham, John (diarist), a de- 
scription of Twelfth Night by, 
217 

Manuscript, circulation of sonnets 
in, 92 and n (Appendix ix), 407, 
412 

Marino, vituperative sonnet by, 126 
n I, 458 n 2 

Markham, Gervase, his adulation 
of Southampton in his sonnets, 

i3S> 138. 403 

Marlowe, Christopher, 59; his 
share in the revision of Henry VI, 
63 ; his influence on Shakespeare, 
64, 65-6; Shakespeare's acknow- 
ledgments, 67; his translation of 
Lucan, 94, 409, 415 

Marmontel and the Shakespearean 
controversy in France, 366 

Marot, Clement, 458 

Marriage, treatment of, in the 'Son- 
nets,' 102 

Marshall, Mr. F. A., 341 

Marston, John, identified by some 
as the 'rival poet,' 140; 190; his 
quarrel with Jonson, 222-8 

Martin, one of the English actors 
who played in Scotland, 42 and n i 

Martin, Lady, 309, 355, 381 

Masks worn by men playing wo- 
men's parts, 39 w 3 

Massey, Mr. Gerald, on the 'Son- 
nets,' 95 w J 

Massinger, Philip, 267; portions of 



482 



WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 



MASTIC 

The Two Nohle Kinsmen assigned 
to, 269; and Henry VIII, 272 
and n 2 
'Mastic,' use of the word, 237 w 
Masuccio, the story of Romeo and 
Juliet told in his Novellino, 56 w 
Matthew, Sir Tobie, 387, 399 
McCuUough, John Edward, 358 
Measure for Measure : the offence of 
Claudio, 23 n; date of composi- 
tion, 243 ; produced at Whitehall, 
243 ; not printed in the poet's life- 
time, 243; source of plot, 245; 
deviations from the old story, 245, 
246; creation of the character of 
Mariana, 246 ; the philosophic sub- 
tlety of the poet's argument, 246; 
references to a ruler's dislike of 
mobs, 246. For editions see Sec- 
tion xix (Bibliography), 311-41 
Meighen, Richard, publisher, 327 
Melin de Saint-Gelais, 458 
Memorials in sculpture to the poet, 

308 
Mencechmi of Plautus, 55 
Mendelssohn, setting of Shake- 
spearean songs by, 364 
Merchant of Venice: the influence 
of Marlowe, 65, 71, sources of 
the plot, 69, 70; the last act, 72; 
date of, 72-3; use of the word 
'lover,' 131 n. For editions see 
Section xix. (Bibliography), 311- 

Meres, Francis, recommends Shake- 
speare's 'sugred' sonnets, 93 and 
n ; his quotations from Horace and 
Ovid on the immortalising power 
of verse, 120 w 2 ; attributes Lovers 
Labour's Won to Shakespeare, 
167; testimony to the poet's 
reputation, 185, 186, 406 

Mermaid Tavern, 184-5 

Merry Devill of Edmonton, 188, 267 
n 2 

Merry Wives of Windsor: Latin 
phrases put into the mouth of Sir 
Hugh Evans, 15; Sir Thomas 
Lucy caricatured in Justice Shal- 
low, 30; Hnes from Marlowe 
sung by Sir Hugh Evans, 67; 
period of production, 177; 
pubUcation of, 178; source of 



MORLEY 

the plot, 178; chief charac- 
teristics, 179. For editions see 
Section xix (Bibliography), 311- 

41 

Metre of Shakespeare's plays a 
rough guide to the chronology, 
50-51; of Shakespeare's poems, 
79-81; of Shakespeare's sonnets, 
99 and n 2 

Mezieres, Alfred, 368 

Michel, Francisque, translation by, 

367 

Middle Temple Hall, performance 
of Twelfth Night at, 217 

Middleton, Thomas, his -allusion 
to Le Motte in Blurt, Master 
Constable, 52 n; his plagia- 
risms of Macbeth in The Witch, 
248-9 

Midsummer Night's Dream: refer- 
ences to the pageants at Kenil- 
worth Park, 18, 166; reference 
to Spenser's 'Teares of the 
Muses,' 84; date of production, 
165 ; sources of the story, 166; the 
final scheme, 166. For editions 
see Section xix (Bibliography), 
311-41 

Millington, Thomas, 61 and n, 179 
and n 

Milton, applies the epithet 'sweetest' 
to Shakespeare, 185 n; his epi- 
taph on Shakespeare, 343 

Minto, Professor, claims Chapman 
as Shakespeare's 'rival' poet, 139 w 

Miranda, character of, 263 

'Mirror of Martyrs,' 219 

Miseries of Enforced Marriage, 252 

'Monarcho, Fantasticall,' 52 n 

Money, its purchasing power in 
the sixteenth century, 3^3, 
204 n 

Montagu, Mrs. Elizabeth, 366 

Montaigne, 'Essays' of, 88 n, 
262 

Montegut, Emile, translation by, 

367 

Montemayor, George de, 54 

Montgomery, Philip Herbert, Earl 
of, 318, 397. 426 _ 

Monument to Shakespeare m Strat- 
ford Church, 285, 298 

Morley, Lord, 426 n 



INDEX 



483 



MOSELEY 

Moseley, Humphrey, publisher, 188, 
267 

Moth, in Love's Labour's Lost, $2 n 

Moulton, Dr. Richard G., 381 

Mucedorus, a play by an unknown 
author, 76 

Much Ado about Nothing: a jesting 
allusion to sonnetteering, 112; 
its publication, 214, 215; date of 
composition, 215; the comic 
characters, 216; Italian origin of 
Hero and Claudio, 215; parts 
taken by William Kemp and 
Cowley, 215; quotation from the 
Spanish Tragedy, 229 n. For 
editions see Section xix (Biblio- 
graphy), 311-41 

Mulberry-tree at New Place, the, 
201 and n 

Music at stage performances in 
Shakespeare's day, 39 n 3; its 
indebtedness to the poet, 357 



Nash, Anthony, the poet's legacy 
to, 285 

Nash, John, the poet's legacy to, 285 

Nash, Thomas (i), marries Eliza- 
beth Hall, Shakespeare's grand- 
daughter, 291 

Nash, Thomas (2), on the per- 
formance of Henry VI, 58-9; 
piracy of his 'Terrors of the 
Night,' 92 w; on the immortal- 
ising power of verse, 118; use 
of the word 'lover,' 131 n; his 
appeals to Southampton, 135, 
138, 139 n, 401, 402; 229 n; 
443 n 2 ; his preface to ' Astrophel 
and Stella,' 445 n i 

Navarre, King of, in Love's Labour's 
Lost, $2 n 

Neil, Samuel, 380 

Nekrasow and Gerbel, translation 
into Russian by, 370 

New Place, Stratford, Shakespeare's 
purchase of, 200, 201; entertain- 
ment of Jonson and Drayton at, 
280; the poet's death at, 281; 
sold on the death of Lady Bar- 
nard '(the poet's granddaughter) 
to Sir Edward Walker, 291; 
pulled down, 292 



OXFORD 

Newcastle, Margaret Cavendish, 
Duchess of, criticism of the poet 
by, 346-7 

Newdegate, Lady, 422 n, 431 n 

Newington Butts Theatre, 38 

Newman, Thomas, piratical publi- 
cation of Sir Philip Sidney's son- 
nets by, 92 n, 445 and n i 

Nicolson, George, English agent in 
Scotland, 4.2 n 1 

Noches de Invierno (Winter Nights), 
262 

Nottingham, Earl of, his company 
of players, 234; taken into the 
patronage of Henry, Prince of 
Wales, 239 n 

Oberon, vision of, 18, 166; in 
'Huon of Bordeaux,' 166 

Oechelhaeuser, W., acting edition 
of the poet by, 363 

Oldcastle, Sir John, play on his 
history, 176, 328 

' Oldcastle, Sir John,' the original 
name of Falstaff in Henry IV, 174 

Oldys, William, 378 

Olney, Henry, publisher, 453 

Orlando Furioso, 48 n, 216 

Ortlepp, E., German translation of 
Shakespeare by, 360 

Othello: date of composition, 243; 
not printed in the poet's lifetime, 
243; plot drawn from Cinthio's 
'Hecatommithi,' 244; new char- 
acters and features introduced 
into the story, 244-5 5 exhibits the 
poet's fully matured powers, 245. 
For editions see Section xix 
(Bibliography), 311-41 

Ovid, influence on Shakespeare of 
his 'Metamorphoses,' 16, 79 and 
n I, 80, 166, 262; claims immor- 
tality for his verse, 118 and n i, 
120 n; the poet's alleged signature 
on the title-page of a copy of 
the 'Metamorphoses' in the 
Bodleian Library, 16 

Oxford, the poet's visits to, 32, 274; 
Hamlet acted at, 232 

Oxford, Earl of, his company of 
actors, 36 

'Oxford' edition of Shakespeare, 
the, 341 



484 



WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 



PAINTER 

Painter, William, his 'Palace of 
Pleasure' and Romeo and Juliet, 
56; All's Well that Ends Well, 
167; Timon of Athens, 251, and 
Coriolanus, 255 

Palcemon and Arcyte, a lost play, 
269 

Palamon and Arsett, a lost play, 269 

'Palladis Tamia,' eulogy on the poet 
in, 185 

Palmer, ]ohn, actor, 353 

'Pandora,' Soothern's collection of 
love-sonnets, 142 w 2 

Pandosto (afterwards called Dorastus 
and Faivnia), Shakespeare's in- 
debtedness to, 260 

Parodies on sonnetteering, 1 10-12, 
125 and n 

' Parthenophil and Parthenophe,' 
Barnes's, 136 

Pasquier, Estienne, 459 

Passerat, Jean, 459 

'Passionate Centurie of Love,' 
Watson's, the passage on Time 
in, 81 and 7i; plagiarisation of Pe- 
trarch in, 105 n 4, 106, 443 n 2, 

444 

'Passionate Pilgrim,' piratical in- 
sertion of two sonnets in, 189, 
453; the contents of, 189 n; 
311; printed with Shakespeare's 
poems, 312 

Patrons of companies of players, 
36; adulation offered to, 142 and 
n 2, 143, 144, 456 and n 

Pavier, Thomas, printer, 187 

'Pecorone, II,' by Ser Giovanni 
Fiorentino, Shakespeare's indebt- 
edness to, 15, 70 and n, 178; 
W. G. Waters' s translation of, 
70 n 

Peele, George, 59; his share in 
the original draft of Henry VI, 
62 

Pembroke, Countess of, dedication 
of Daniel's 'Delia' to, 133-4, 446; 
homage paid to, by Nicholas 
Breton, 142 n 2 

Pembroke, Henry, second Earl of, 
his company of players, perform 
Henry VI (part iii), 37, 61; and 
Titus Andr onions, 69 

Pembroke, William, third Earl of, 



PETRARCH 

the question of the identification of 
'Mr. W. H.' with, 98, 422-6; per- 
formance at his Wilton residence, 
240 and n, 427; dedication of 
the First Folio to, 318; his al- 
leged relations with Shakespeare, 
427-31; the identification of the 
'dark lady' with his mistress, 
Mary Fitton, 127 n, 425; the 
mistaken notion that Shakespeare 
was his protege, 127 n; dedica- 
tions by Thorpe to, 415 and n i, 
419 n 2 
Penrith, Shakespeares at, i 
Pepys, his criticisms oiThe Tempest 
and Midsummer Night's Dream, 

345 

Percy, William, his sonnets, en- 
titled ' Coelia,' 45 1 

Perez, Antonio, and Antonio in 
The Merchant of Venice, 72 n 

Pericles: date of composition, 252; 
a work of collaboration, 252; the 
poet's contributions, 252; dates 
of the various editions, 253; not 
included in the First Folio, 317; 
included in Third Folio, 328. For 
editions see Section xix (Biblio- 
graphy), 311-41 

Perkes (Clement), in Henry IV, 
member of a family at Stinch- 
combe Hill in the sixteenth cen- 
tury, 173 _ 

'Perkins Folio,' forgeries in the, 

327, 333 ^* I. 383 and n 

Personalities on the stage, 223 w i 

Peruse, Jean de la, 459 

Petowe, Henry, elegy on Queen 
Elizabeth by, 152 

Petrarch, emulated by Elizabethan 
sonnetteers, 88, 89, 90 n; feigns 
old age in his sonnets, 90 n; his 
metre, 99; Spenser's translations 
from, 105; imitation of his son- 
nets justified by Gabriel Harvey, 
105 n 4; plagiarisms of, admitted 
by sonnetteers, 105 n 4; Wyatt's 
translations of two of his sonnets, 
105 n 4, 443; plagiarised in- 
directly by Shakespeare, 114, 115 
and n, 117 }i i ; the melancholy 
of his sonnets, 156 n; imitated 
in France, 459 



INDEX 



485 



PHELPS 

Phelps, Samuel,_ 341, 355 

Phillips, Augustine, actor, friend of 
Shakespeare, 37; induced to re- 
vive RicJmrd II at the Globe iu 
1601, 182; his death, 273 

Phillips, Edward (Milton's nephew), 
criticism of the poet by, 378; 
editor of Drummond's Sonnets, 

455. >* I 
'Phillis,' Lodge's, 122 n 2, 449 and 

n 3 
Philosophy, Chapman's sonnets in 

praise of, 457 
'Phoenix and the Turtle, The,' 190, 

191, 316 
Pichot, A., 367 
'Pierce Pennilesse.' See Nash, 

Thomas (2) 
'Pierces Supererogation,' by Gabriel 

Harvey, 105 n 4, 109 
Pindar, his claim for the immortality 

of verse, 118 and n i 
Plague, the, in Stratford-on-Avon, 

10; in London, 68, 239 
Plautus, the plot of the Comedy of 

Errors drawn from, 16; transla- 
tion of, 55 
Plays, sale of, 48 and n ; revision of, 

48; their publication deprecated 

by playhouse authorities, 49 n; 

only a small proportion printed, 

49 n; prices paid for, 209 and n 
'Pleiade, La,' title of the literary 

comrades of Ronsard, 458; list 

of, V 459 
Plume, Dr. Thomas, 10 n 
'Plutarch,' North's translation of, 

48, 166, 218, 251, 254 and n, 256 

and n 
Poaching episode, the, 28, 29 
'Poetaster,' Jonson's, 225, 226 

and n 
Poland, translations and perfor- 
mances of Shakespeare in, 370 
Pontoux, Claude de, name of his 

heroine copied by Drayton, 108 
Pope, Alexander, 308; edition of 

Shakespeare by, 330 
Porto, Luigi da, adapts the story of 

Romeo and Juliet, 56 n i 
Portraits of the poet, 297-308, 308 

n 2; the 'Stratford' portrait, 298; 

Droeshout's engraving, 299, 300, 



QUINEY 

312, 318; the ' Droeshout ' paint- 
ing, 300-2 ; portrait in the Claren- 
don gallery, 302; 'Ely House' 
portrait, 302, 303 ; ' Chandos ' 
portrait, 303, 304, 305; 'Jansen' 
portrait, 304, 305; 'Felton' and 
'Soest' portraits, 305-6; minia- 
tures, 306 

Pott, Mrs. Henry, 388 

Prevost, Abbe, 365 

Pritchard, Mrs., 352 

Procter, Bryan Waller (Barry Corn- 
wall), 340 

Promos and Cassandra, 245 

Prospero, character of, 266 

Provinces, the, practice of theatrical 
touring in, 40-3, 68 

Publication of dramas: deprecated 
by playhouse authorities, 49 n; 
only a small proportion of the 
dramas of the period printed, 
49 n; sixteen of Shakespeare's 
plays published in his lifetime, 49 

Punning, 434, 435, 436 and n 

Puritaine, or the Widdow of Wat- 
ling-streete, The, 187, 328 

Puritanism, alleged prevalence in 
Stratford-on-Avon of, 10 n; 278 
n I ; its hostility to dramatic re- 
presentations, 10 n, 220, 221 n i; 
the poet's references to, 277 n i 

'Pyramus and Thisbe,' 413 



QuARLES, John, 'Banishment of 
Tarquin' of, 312 

Quarto editions of the plays, in the 
poet's lifetime, 313, 314; post- 
humous, 314, 315; of the poems 
in the poet's lifetime, 311 ; post- 
humous, 311 

' Quatorzain,' term applied to the 
Sonnet, 443 n 2, cf. 445 n i 

'Queen's Children of the Chapel,' 
the, 35, 36, 39, 222-6 

Queen's Company of Actors, the, 
at Stratford-on-Avon, 10; in 
London, 34; 36, 240 n 

Quiney, Richard, Shakespeare's 
correspondent, 202 

Quiney, Thomas, marries Judith 
Shakespeare, 280; at Stratford, 
289; his children, 289-90 



486 



WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 



QUINTON 

Quinton, Hacket family at, 170 

Ralegh, Sir Walter, extravagant 
apostrophe to Queen Elizabeth 
by, 141 n I ; 189 n 

Raleigh, Prof. Walter, 381 

Ramsay, Henry, 16 n 2 

Rapp, IVI., German translation of 
Shakespeare by, 360 

'Ratseis Ghost,' and Ratsey's ad- 
dress to the players, 192, 206 

Ravenscroft, Edward, on Titus 
Andronicus, 68, 348 

Reed, Mr. Edwin, 388 

Reed, Isaac, 337, 338 

Reformation, the, at Stratford-on- 
Avon, 10 n 

Rehan, Miss Ada, 358 

Religion and Philosophy, sonnets on, 

456, 457 

Return from Parnassus, The, 205, 
206 n I, 226-7, 286 

Revision of plays, the poet's, 48, 49 

Reynoldes, William, the poet's le- 
gacy to, 285 

Rich, Barnabe, story of 'ApoUonius 
and Silla' by, 54, 218 

Rich, Penelope, Lady, Sidney's pas- 
sion for, 444 

Richard II: the influence of Mar- 
lowe, 65, 66; published anony- 
mously, 66; the deposition scene, 
66; the facts drawn from Ho- 
linshed,- 67; its revival on the 
• eve of the rising of the Earl of 
Essex, 182, 399. For editions see 
Section xix (Bibliography), 311-41 

Richard III : the influence of Mar- 
lowe, 66-7 ; materials drawn from 
Holinshed, 67 ; Mr. Swinburne's 
criticism, 66; I3urbage's imperso- 
nation of the hero, 66; published 
anonymously, 66; Colley Gib- 
ber's adaptation, 351. i^'or editions 
see Section xix (Bibliography), 
311-41 

Richardson, John, one of the sure- 
ties for the bond against impedi- 
ments respecting Shakespeare's 
marriage, 21, 23 

Richmond Palace, performances at, 
86, 238 

Ristori, Madame, 369 



ROWE 

Roberts, James, printer (of 'the 
players' bills' or programmes), 69, 
73, 165 n, 230 and n, 234, 315, 347 

Roche, Walter, master of Stratford 
Grammar School in Shakespeare's 
boyhood, 13 

Roles, Shakespeare's: at Greenwich 
Palace, 44, 45^1; in Every 
Man in his Humour, 45; in 
Sejanus, 45; the Ghost in 
Hajnlet, 45; 'played some kingly 
parts in sport,' 45; Adam in As 
You Like It, 45 

Rolfe, Mr. W. J., 341 

Romeo and Juliet, 56; plot drawn 
from the Italian, 56; ^ate of 
composition, 57; first printed, 
57; authentic and revised version 
of 1599, 57-8; two choruses in the 
sonnet form, 88 ; satirical allusioh 
to sonnetteering, 112. For editions 
see Section xix (Bibliography), 
311-41 

Rome us and Juliet, Arthur Brooke's, 

56, 337 

Ronsard, plagiarised by English 
sonnetteers, 106, 107 n 3, 448 
seq.; by Shakespeare, 114, 115 and 
n I ; his claim for the immortality 
of verse, 117, 118 and n i, 120 n; 
his sonnets of vituperation, 125; 
first gave the sonnet a literary 
vogue in France, 458; and 'La 
Pleiade/ 458; modern reprint of 
his works, 4.61 n 

Rosalind, played by a boy, 39 w 3 

Rosaline, praised for her 'black- 
ness,' 123 

'Rosalynde, Euphues Golden Le- 
gacie,' Lodge's, 216 

Rose Theatre, Bankside: erected 
by Philip Henslowe, 37; opened 
by Lord Strange's company, 37; 
the scene of the poet's first suc- 
cesses, 38; performance of Henry 
VI, 58; production of the Vene- 
syon Comedy, 72 

Rossi, representation of Shake- 
speare by, 369 

Roussillon, Countess of, 167 

Rowe, Nicholas, on the parentage 
of Shakespeare's wife, 19; on 
Shakespeare's poaching escapade. 



INDEX 



487 



ROWE 

28; on Shakespeare's perfor- 
mance of the Ghost in Hamlet, 45 ; 
on the story of Southampton's 
gift to Shakespeare, 130; on 
Queen EHzabeth's enthusiasm for 
the character of Falstaff, 177; 
on the poet's last years at Strat- 
ford, 275; on John Combe's 
epitaph, 278 n; his edition of 
the poet's plays, 329, 388 

Rowington, the Richard and Wil- 
liam Shakespeares of, 2 

Rowlands, Samuel, 413 

Rowley, William, 188, 252 

Roydon, Matthew, poem on Sir 
Philip Sidney, 144, 191 w 

Riimelin, Gustav, 362 

Rupert, Prince, at Stratford-on- 

^ Avon, 290 

Kusconi, Carlo, his Italian prose 
version of Shakespeare, 369 

Russia, translations and perfor- 
mances of Shakespeare in, 370 

Rutland, Earl of, pref., 277 

Rymer, Thomas, his censure of the 
poet, 345 



S., T. M., tribute to the poet thus 
headed, 343 and n, 344 

S., W., initials in Willobie's book, 
160, 161; commonness of the 
initials, 161 n; fraudulent use of 
the initials, 186, 187 

Sackville, Thomas, 424 n 

Sadler, Hamnet or Hamlett, god- 
father of the poet's son, 27; the 
poet's legacy to, 285 

Saint-Saens, M., opera of Henry 
VIII by, 369 

St. Helen's, Bishopsgate, a William 
Shakespeare in 1598 living in, 
39 and n 2 

Sainte-Marthe, Scevole de, 459 

Salvini, representation of Othello 
by, 369 

Sand, George, translation of As 
You Like It by, 368 

Sandells, Fulk, one of the sureties 
for the bond against impediments 
with respect to Shakespeare's 
marriage, 21, 23; supervisor of 
Richard Hathaway' s will, 22 



SHADOW 

Saperton, 28, 30 

'Sapho and Phao,' address to 

Cupid in, loi n 
Satiro-Mastix, a, retort to Jonson's 

Cynthia's Revels, 222 
Savage, Mr. Richard, 170 n, 378 
'Saviolo's Practise,' 216 
Scenery unknown in Shakespeare's 

day, 39 and n 3; designed by 

Inigo Jones for masques, 39 w 3 ; 

Sir Philip Sidney on difficulties 

arising from its absence, 39 

n 3 
Schiller, adaptation of Macbeth for 

the stage by, 361 
Schlegel, A. W. von, 187; German 

translation of Shakespeare by, 

360; lectures on Shakespeare by, 

360 
Schmidt, Alexander, 380 
'Schoole of Abuse,' 70 
Schroeder, F. U. L., German actor 

of Shakespeare, 363 
Schubert, Franz, setting of Shake- 

pearean songs by, 364 
Schumann, setting of Shakespearean 

songs by, 364 
'Scillaes Metamorphosis,' Lodge's, 

drawn upon by Shakespeare for 

'Venus and Adonis,' 79 and n 2 
Scoloker, Anthony, in 'Daiphantus,' 

286 
Scotland, Shakespeare's alleged 

travels in, 41-3; visits of actors 

to, 42 
Scott, Reginald, allusion to Mo- 

narcho in 'The Discoverie of 

Witchcraft' of, 52 w 
Scott, Sir Walter, at Charlecote, 29 
Scourge of Folly, 45 w 2 
Sedley, Sir Charles, apostrophe to 

the poet, 347 
Sejanus, Shakespeare takes part in 

the performance of, 45; 418 
Selimus, 186 

Serafino dell' Aquila, Watson's in- 
debtedness to, 81 n 2, 106, 107 

n I, 458 n 2 
Seve, Maurice, 108 and n, 446, 458, 

461 n I 
Sewell, Dr. George, 330 
'Shadow of the Night, The,' Chap- 
man's, 139 7'i 



488 



WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 



SHAKESPEARE 

Shakespeare, the surname of, i, 2, 
cf. 24 n 

Shakespeare, Adam, i 

Shakespeare, Ann, a sister of the 
poet, II 

Shakespeare, Anne (or Agnes) : her 
parentage, 19, 20; her marriage 
to the poet, 19, 20-3; assumed 
identification of her with Anne 
Whateley, 24 and n; her debt, 
194; her husband's bequest to 
her, 282-3; her widow's dower 
barred, 283 and n; her wish to be 
buried in her husband's grave, 
284; committed by her hus- 
band to the care of the elder 
daughter, 284; her death, 289 
and n 

Shakespeare, Edmund, a brother of 
the poet, 11; *a player,' 292; 
death, 292 

Shakespeare, Gilbert, a brother of 
the poet, 1 1 ; witnesses his 
brother's performance of Adam 
in As You Like It, 45; appa- 
rently had a son named Gilbert, 
292 ; his death not recorded, 292 

Shakespeare, Hamnet, son of tlie 
poet, 27, 194 

Shakespeare, Henry, one of the 
poet's uncles, 3, 4, 193 

Shakespeare, Joan (i), 7 

Shakespeare, Joan (2), seeYiaxt, Joan 

Shakespeare, John (i), the second 
recorded holder of this surname 
(thirteenth century), i 

Shakespeare, John (2), the poet's 
father, administrator of Richard 
Shakespeare's estate, 3, 4; claims 
that his grandfather received a 
grant of land from Henry VII, 2, 
195; leaves Snitterfield for Strat- 
ford-on-Avon, 4; his business, 4; 
his property in Stratford and his 
municipal offices, 5; marries 
Mary Arden, 6, 7 ; his children, 
7; his house in Henley Street, 
Stratford, 8, 1 1 ; appointed alder- 
man and bailiff, 10; welcomes 
actors at Stratford, 10; his alleged 
sympathies with puritanism, 10 n; 
his application for a grant of 
arms, 2, 10 n, 194-9; his 



SHAKESPEARE 

financial difficulties, 11, 12; his 
younger children, 1 1 ; writ of 
distraint issued against him, 12; 
deprived of his alderman's gown, 
12; his trade of butcher, 18; 
increase of pecuniary difficulties, 
193; relieved by the poet, 194; 
his death, 211 

Shakespeare or Shakspere, John (a 
shoemaker), another resident at 
Stratford, 12 w 3 

Shakespeare, Judith, the poet's 
second daughter, 27, 212; her 
marriage to Thomas C^uiney, 280; 
her father's bequest to her, 285; 
her children, 289, 290; her death, 
290 

Shakespeare, Margaret, 7 

Shakespeare, Mary, the poet's 
mother: her marriage, 6, 7; her 
ancestry and parentage, 6, 7 ; her 
property, 7 ; her title to bear the 
arms of the Arden family, 198; 
her death, 275 

Shakespeare, Richard, a brother of 
the poet, II, 275; his death, 292 

Shakespeare, Richard, of Rowing- 
ton, 2 

Shakespeare, Richard, of Snitter- 
field, probably the poet's grand- 
father, 3; his family, 3, 4 ; letters 
of administration of his estate, 3 
and n 3 

Shakespeare, Richard, of Wroxhall, 

3 

Shakespeare, Susanna, a daughter 
of the poet, 22. See also Hall, 
Mrs. Susanna 

Shakespeare, Thomas, probably one 
of the poet's uncles, 3, 4 

Shakespeare or 'Sakspere,' William, 
the first recorded holder of this 
surname (thirteenth century), i 

Shakespeare, William : paren- 
tage and birthplace, 1-9; child- 
hood, education, and marriage, 
10-25 (•^^^ ^^•^^ Education of 
Shakespeare ; Poaching ; Shake- 
speare, Anne), departure from 
Stratford, 28-32; ' theatrical em- 
ployment, 32-5; joins the Lord 
Chamberlain's company, 37; his 
roles, 44; his first plays, 51-77; 



INDEX 



489 



SHAKESPEARE 

publication of his 'Poems,' 78, 80 
seq.; his 'Sonnets/ 87-128, 155- 
60; patronage of the Earl of 
Southampton, 129-54, 374; plays 
composed between 1595 and 

1598, 165-79; his popularity and 
influence, 182-6; returns to 
Stratford, 194; buys New Place, 
200; financial position before 

1599, 203 seq.; financial position 
after 1599, 207 seq.; formation 
of his estate at Stratford, 210 
seq.; plays' written between 1599 
and 1609, 214-56; the latest plays, 
257 seq. ; performance of his plays 
at Court, 273 {see also Court; 
Whitehall ; Elizabeth, Queen ; 
James I); final settlement in 
Stratford (161 1), 275 seq.; death 
(1616), 280; his will, 282 seq.; 
monument at Stratford, 285; 
personal character, 286-8; his 
survivors and descendants, 289 
seq.; autographs, portraits, and 
memorials, 293-310; bibliogra- 
phy, 311-41; his posthumous 
reputation in England and abroad, 
342-71; general estimate of 
his work, 372-4; biographical 
sources, 377-80; alleged relation 
between him and the Earl of 
Pembroke, 427-31 

Shakespeare Gallery in Pall Mall, 

357 
'Shakespeare Society,' the, 350, 381 
Shallow, Justice, Sir Thomas Lucy 

caricatured as, 30; his house in 

Gloucestershire, 172, 173; 179 
Sheldon copy of the First Folio, 

the, 321, 322 
Shelton, Thomas, translator of 

'Don Quixote,' 267 
Shiels, Robert, compiler of 'Lives 

of the Poets,' 34 n 
Shottery, Anne Hathaway's cot- 
tage at, 20 
Shylock, sources of the portrait of, 

71, 72 and n 
Sibthorp, Mr. Coningsby, his copy 

of the First Folio, 323, 324 and n 
Siddons, Mrs. Sarah, 353, 354 
Sidney, Sir Philip: on the absence 

of scenery in a theatre, 39^3; 



SONNETS 

translation of verses from ' Diana,' 
54; Shakespeare's indebtedness 
to him, 63; addressed as 'Willy' 
by some of his eulogists, 84-5 ; his 
' Astro phel and Stella,' brings the 
sonnet into vogue, 87; piracy of 
his sonnets, 92 n, 447 ; circu- 
lation of manuscript copies of his 
'Arcadia,' 92 n; his addresses 
to Cupid in his ' Astrophel,' 10 1 n; 
warns the public against the 
insincerity of sonnetteers, 108; 
on the conceit of the immortalis- 
ing power of verse, 118; his 
praise of 'blackness,' 123 and 
n i; sonnet on 'Desire,' 157; 
use of the word 'will,' 433; edi- 
tions of 'Astrophel and Stella,' 
444, 445 ; popularity of his works, 

.445 
Sidney, Sir Robert, 398 
Sievers, Eduard Wilhelm, 362 
Simmes (or Sims), Valentine, 66 n, 

174 w, 215 w 
Singer, Samuel Weller, 340 
Sly, Christopher, probably drawn 

from life, 169, 170, 171; 229 n 
Smethwick, John, bookseller, 316, 327 
Smith, Richard, publisher, 447 
Smith, Wentworth, 161 n; plays 

produced by, 186 n 
Smith, William, sonnets of, 142 

n 2, 161 n, 406, 453 
Smith, Mr. W. H., and the Baconian 

hypothesis, 388 
Smithson, Miss, actress, 368 
Snitterfield, Richard Shakespeare 

rents land of Robert Arden at, 

3, 6; departure of John Shake- 
speare, the poet's father, from, 4; 

the Arden property at, 7 ; sale of 

Mary Shakespeare's property at, 

12 and n i ; 193 
Snodham, Thomas, printer, 187 
Somers, Sir George, wrecked off the 

Bermudas, 261 
Somerset House, Shakespeare and 

his company at, 241 and n 2 
Sonnet in France (i 550-1600), the, 

bibliographical note on (Appendix 

X), 458-61 
Sonnets, Shakespeare's: the poet's 

first attempts, 88; the majority 



490 



WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 



SONNETS 

probably composed in 1594, 89; 
a few written between 1594 and 
1603 {e.g. cvii); their literary 
value, 91, 92; circulation in 
manuscript, 92, 412; commended 
by Meres, 93 ; their piratical pub- 
lication in 1609, 93-8, 406; their 
form, 99, 100; want of continuity, 
100, 104; the two 'groups,' 100, 
10 1 ; main topics of the first 
'group,' 102, 103; main topics 
of second 'group,' 103, 104; 
rearrangement in the edition of 
1640, 104; autobiographical only 
in a limited sense, 104, 113, 129, 
156, 164; censure of them by Sir 
John Davies, 1 1 1 ; their borrowed 
conceits, 113-28; indebtedness 
to Drayton, Petrarch, Ronsard, 
De Baif, Desportes, and others, 
1 14-16; the poet's claim of 
immortality for his sonnets, 
1 17-21, cf. 118 n i; the 'Will 
Sonnets,' 121 (and Appendix 
viii); praise of 'blackness,' 122; 
vituperation, 124-8; 'dedicatory' 
sonnets, 129 seq.\ the 'rival poet,' 
134-40; sonnets of friendship, 
140, 142-51; the supposed story 
of intrigue, 157-62; summary of 
conclusions respecting the ' Son- 
nets,' 162-4; edition of 1640, 312 

Sonnets, quoted with explanatory 
comments: xx, 97 n; xxiv, 
117 wi; xxvi, 132 n; xxxii, 132, 
i33_n; xxxvii, 134; xxxviii, 133; 
xxxix, 134; xlvi-xlvii, 116; Iv, 
120 n, 121; Ixxiv, 134 (quoL); 
Ixxviii, 129; Ixxx, 138; Ixxxv, 
137; Ixxxvi, 136; Ixxviii, 137; 
xciv, 1, 14, 76, 93; c, 130; 
ciii, 130; cvh, 14 n, 91, 151, 
153. 396; cviii, 134; ex, 45, 
134; cxi, 46; cxix, 156 and 
n; cxxxiv, 441; cxxvi, 100 and 
n; cxxvii, 122; cxxix, 156, 
157 and n i; cxxxii, 122; 
cxxxv-cxxxvi, 436-40; cxxxviii, 
93; cxliii, 97 n, 441, 442 and 
n; cxliv, 93, 157, 313; cliii- 
cliv, 117 and n 2 

— the vogue of the Elizabethan : 
English sonnetteering inaugu- 



SOUTHWELL 

rated by Wyatt and Surrey, 87, 
443, 444; followed by Thomas 
Watson, 87, 444; Sidney's 
'Astrophel and Stella,' 87, 444, 
445 and n; poets celebrate 
patrons' virtues in sonnets, 88; 
conventional device of sonnetteers 
of feigning old age, 89, 90 n; 
lack of genuine sentiment, 104; 
French and Italian models, 105 
and n 3, 106-8; Appendices ix 
and X ; translations from ' Du 
Bellay, Desportes, and Petrarch, 
105 and w 4, 106, 107; admissions 
of insincerity, 109; censure of 
false sentiment in sonnets, no; 
Shakespeare's scornful allusions 
to sonnets in his plays, in, 
112; vituperative sonnets, 124-8; 
the word 'sonnet' often used 
for 'song' or 'poem,' 443 n 2; 
i. Collected sonnets of feigned 
love, 1 59 1-7, 445-56; II. Sonnets 
to patrons, 456; iii. Sonnets on 
philosophy and religion, 456, 
457; number of sonnets pub- 
lished between 1591 and 1597, 
455~7j various poems in other 
stanzas practically belonging to 
the sonnet category, 454 n 2 

Soothern, John, sonnets to the Earl 
of Oxford, 142 n 2 

Sophocles, parallelisms with the 
works of Shakespeare, 14 n 

Southampton, Henry Wriothesley, 
third Earl of, 54; the dedications 
to him of 'Venus and Adonis' 
and 'Lucrece,' 78, 81; his pa- 
tronage of Florio, 88 n; his pa- 
tronage of Shakespeare, 130-54; 
his gift to the poet, 130, 207; his 
youthful appearance, 147; his 
identity with the youth of Shake- 
speare's sonnets of 'friendship' 
evidenced by his portraits, 148 
and n, 149, 150; imprisonment, 
150, 151, 396; his long hair, 150 
n 2 ; his beauty, 393 ; his youth- 
ful career, 390-7; as a literary 
patron, 398-405 

Southwell, Robert, circulation of 
incorrect copies of 'Mary Mag- 
dalene's Tears' by, 92 n; publi- 



INDEX 



491 



SOUTHWELL 

cation of 'A Foure-fould Medita- 
tion' by, 96, 416 and n, 417 n; 
dedication of his 'Short Rule of 
Life,' 413 

Southwell, Father Thomas, 387 

Spanish, translation of Shake- 
speare's plays into, 371 

Spanish Tragedy, Kyd's, popularity 
of, 68, 228; quoted in the Tam- 
ing of The Shrew, 229 w. 

■Spedding, James, 271 

Spelling of the poet's name, 294-6 

Spenser, Edmund: probably at- 
tracted to Shakespeare by the 
poems 'Venus and Adonis' and 
'Lucrece,' 83; his description of 
Shakespeare in 'Colin Clouts 
come home againe,' 83; Shake- 
speare's reference to Spenser's 
work in Midsummer Night's 
Dream, 84; Spenser's allusion to 
'our pleasant Willy' not a refer- 
ence to the poet, 84 and n; 
his description of the 'gentle 
spirit' no description of Shake- 
speare, 85 and n; translation of 
sonnets from Du Bellay and Pe- 
trarch, 105; called by Gabriel 
Harvey 'an English Petrarch,' 
105, and cf. #4; on the immor- 
talising power of verse, 119 and 
n I ; his apostrophe to Admiral 
Lord Charles Howard, 144; his 
'Amoretti,' 119, 451 and n 5, 452; 
dedication of his ' Faerie Queene,' 
414 

'Spirituall Sonnettes' by Constable, 

456 

Sport, Shakespeare's knowledge of, 
27, 28 and n, 179 

Stael, Madame de, 366 

Stafford, Lord, his company of 
actors, 34 

Stafford, Simon, 174 w 

Stage, conditions of, in Shake- 
speare's day: absence of scenery 
and scenic costume, 39 and n 3 ; 
the performance of female parts 
by men or boys, 39 and n 3 ; the 
curtain and balcony of the stage, 
39 w 3 

Stanhope of Harrington, Lord, 242 n 

'Staple of News, The,' Jonson's 



SUMARAKOW 

quotations from Julius Ccesar 
in, 227 n 

Staunton, Howard, 327; his edition 
of the poet, 338, 339 

Steele, Richard, on Betterton's 
rendering of Othello, 350 

Steevens, George: his edition of 
Shakespeare, 335; his revision of 
Johnson's edition, 335, 336; his 
criticisms, 335, 336; the 'Puck 
of commentators,' 336, 381 

Stinchcombe Hill referred to as 
'the Hiir in Henry IV, 173 

Stopes, Mrs. C. C, 378 

Strange, Lord. See Derby, Earl of 

Straparola, 'Notti' of, and the 
Merry Wives of Windsor, 178 

Stratford-on-Avon, settlement of 
John Shakespeare, the poet's 
father, at, 4; property owned by 
John, Shakespeare in, 5, 8; the 
poet's birthplace at, 8, 9; the 
Shakespeare Museum at, 8, 309 ; 
the plague in 1564 at, 10; actors 
for the first time at, 10; and 
the Reformation, 10 n; the 
Shoemakers' Company and its 
Master, 12 n 3; the grammar 
school, 13; Shakespeare's de- 
parture from, 28, 30, ;^2)'i native 
place of Richard Field, 32-3 ; 
allusions in the Taming of The 
Shrew to, 168; the poet's return 
in 1596 to, 194; the poet's pur- 
chase of New Place, 200; ap- 
peals from townsmen to the poet 
for aid, 202, 203; the poet's pur- 
chase of land at, 210, 211-13; 
the poet's last years at, 275, 277; 
attempt to enclose common lands 
and Shakespeare's interest in it, 
278, 279; the poet's death and 
burial at, 280-1; Shakespeare 
memorial building at, 309; the 
'Jubilee' and the tercentenary, 

350. 
Suckling, Sir John, 344 

'Sugred,' an epithet applied to the 

poet's work, 85, 193 and n, 406 
Sullivan, Barry, 309 
Sully, M. Mounet, 368 n, 369 
Sumarakow, translation mto Rus- 
sian by, 370 



492 



WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 



SUPPOSES 

Supposes, the, of George Gascoigne, 
i68 

Surrey, Earl of, sonnets of, 87, 99, 
105 n 4, 443, 444 

Sussex, Earl of, his company of 
actors, 36; TiHis Andronicus 
performed by, 37, 68 

Swedish, translations of Shake- 
speare in, 371 

'Sweet,' epithet applied to Shake- 
speare, 286 

Swinburne, Mr. A. C., 66, 75, 76 n, 

349, 381 

Sylvester, Joshua, sonnets to pa- 
trons by, 404, 456 and n 

Symmons, Dr. Charles, 340 

Taille, Jean de la, 461 n 

Tamburlaine, Marlowe's, 63 

Taming of A Shrew, 168 

Taming of The Shrew: probable 
period of production, 168; 
identical with Lovers Labour's 
Won, 167; and The Taming of 
A Shrew, 168; the story of 
Bianca and her lovers and the 
Supposes of George Gascoigne, 
168; biographical bearing of the 
Induction, 168; quotation from 
the Spanish Tragedy, 229 n. For 
editions see Section xix (Biblio- 
graphy), 311-41 

Tarleton, Richard, 85; his 'Newes 
out of Purgatorie' and the Merry 
Wives of Windsor, 176 

Tasso, similarity of sentiment with 
that of Shakespeare's 'Sonnets,' 
156 n 

'Teares of the Isle of Wight,' 
elegies on Southampton, 405 

'Teares of the Muses,' Spenser's, 
referred to in Midsummer Night's 
Dream, 84 

'Tears of Fancie,' Watson's, 444, 

449 
Tempest, The : traces of the influence 
of Ovid, 15; 26 n; 44; the ship- 
wreck akin to a similar scene in 
Pericles, 253; probably the latest 
drama completed by the poet, 
261; and the shipwreck of Sir 
George Somers's fleet on the Ber- 
mudas, 261; the source for the 



THORPE 

plot, 263; performed at the Prin- 
cess Elizabeth's nuptial festivities, 
263; the date of composition, 263 
and n; its performance at White- 
hall in 161 1, 263 w; its lyrics, 264 
and n; Ben Jonson's scornful allu- 
sion to, 264; reflects the poet's 
highest imaginative powers, 265; 
fanciful interpretations of, 265, 
266; chief characters of, 265, 266 
and notes i and 2 . For editions see 
Section xix (Bibliography), 311- 

41 

Temple Grafton, 24 and n 

'Temple Shakespeare, The, '^341 

Tercentenary festival, the Shake- 
speare, 350 

'Terrors of the Night,' piracy of, 
92 n; nocturnal habits of 'famil- 
iars' described in, 139 w 

Terry, Miss Ellen, 356 

Theatre, The, at Shoreditch, 2)yi 
owned by James Burbage, 34, 37; 
Shakespeare at, between 1595 
and 1599, 38; demolished, and 
the Globe Theatre built with the 
materials, 38 

Theatres in London: Blackfriars 
{q_.v.); Curtain {q.v.); Duke's, 
307; Fortune, 220, 241 n 2; 
Globe (q.v.); Newington Butts, 
38; Red Bull, 32 n 2; Rose 
(q.v.); Swan, 29 w 2; The 
Theatre, Shoreditch (q.v.) 

Theobald, Lewis, his emendations ^ 
of Hamlet, 232; publishes a play 
alleged to be by Shakespeare, 
267—8 ; his criticism of Pope, 331 ; 
his edition of the poet's works, 
331, 332 

Thomas, Ambroise, opera of Ham- 
let by, 369 

Thorns, W. J., 378 

Thornbury, G. W., 378 

Thorpe, Thomas, the piratical 
publisher of Shakespeare's Son- 
nets, 93-100; his relations with 
Marlowe, 94, 139 n; adds 'A 
Lover's Complaint' to the col- 
lection of Sonnets, 95; his bom- 
bastic dedication to 'Mr. W. H.,' 
96-9; the true history of 'Mr. 
W. H.' and (Appendix v), 406-21 



INDEX 



493 



THREE 

Three Ladies of London, The, some 
of the scenes in the Merchant of 
Venice anticipated in, 70, 71 

Thyard, Ponthus de, a member of 
'La Pleiade,' 459, 460 

Tieck, Ludwig, theory respecting 
The Tempest of, 263, 360 

Tilney, Edmund, master of the 
revels, 241 w 3 

Timon of Athens : date of compo- 
sition, 251; written in collabora- 
tion, 251 ; a previous play on the 
same subject, 242; its sources, 
251. For editions see Section 
xix (Bibliography), 311-41 

Timon, Lucian's, 251 

Titus Andronicus: one of the only 
two plays of the poet's performed 
by a company other than his 
own, 37; doubts of its authen- 
ticity, 68; internal evidence of 
Kyd's authorship, 68; suggested 
by Titus and Vespasian, 68; 
played by various companies, 
69; entered on the 'Stationers' 
Register' in 1594, 69. For edi- 
tions see Section xix (Bibliogra- 
phy), 311-41 

Titus and Vespasian, Titus An- 
dronicus suggested by, 68 

Tofte, Robert, sonnets by, 454 and 
n 2 

Topics of the day, Shakespeare's 
treatment of, 52 w, 53 

Tottel's 'Miscellany,' 443, 444 

Tours of English actors: in foreign 
countries between 1580 and 1630, 
43 ; and see n i ; in provincial 
towns, 40, 41-43, 68, 221; itine- 
rary from 1593 to 1614, 41 n I, 239 

Translations of" the poet's works, 
358 seq. 

Travel, foreign, Shakespeare's ridi- 
cule of, 43 and n i 

'Troilus and Cresseid,' 235 

Troilus and Cressida: allusion to 
the strife between adult and boy 
actors, 224; date of production, 
224, 233; the quarto and folio 
editions, 234, 235; treatment of 
the theme, 235, 236; the endea- 
vour to treat the play as the poet's 
contribution to controversy be- 



ULRICI 

tween Jonson and Marston and 
Dekker, 237 w; plot drawn from 
Chaucer's 'Troilus and Cresseid,' 
and Lydgate's 'Troy Book,' 235. 
For editions see Section xix 
(Bibliography), 311-41 

'Troy Book,' Lydgate's, 235 

True Tragedie of Richard III, The, 
an anonymous play, 65, 313 

True Tragedie of Richard, Duke of 
Yorke, 61 

Trundell, John, 230 n 

Turbervile, George, 443 n 2 

Turbutt, Mr. W. G., 324 

Twelfth Night: description of a 
betrothal, 23 n; indebtedness to 
the story of 'Apollonius and 
Silla,' 54; date of production, 
217; allusion to the 'new map,' 
217 and n i ; produced at Middle 
Temple Hall, 217; Manningham's 
description of, 217; probable 
source of the story, 218. _ For 
editions see Section xix (Biblio- 
graphy), 31 1-4 I 

Twiss, F., 380 n 

Two Gentlemen of Verona: allusion 
to Valentine travelling from Ve- 
rona to Milan by sea, 44; date 
of production, 53-4; probably 
an adaptation, 54; source of the 
story, 54; farcical drollery, 54; 
first publication, 55; influence 
of Lyly, 64; satirical allusion 
to sonnetteering, in; resem- 
blance of it to AlVs Well that 
Ends Well, 167. For editions 
see Section xix (Bibliography), 
311-41 

Two Noble Kinsmen, The: at- 
tributed to Fletcher and Shake- 
speare, 268 and n; Massinger's 
alleged share in its production, 
269; plot drawn from Chaucer's 
'Knight's Tale,' 269 

Twyne, Lawrence, the story of 
Pericles in the 'Patterne of Pain- 
full Adventures' by, 253 

Tyler, Mr. Thomas, on the 'Son- 
nets,' 133 n, 422 n, 431 n 

Ulrici, 'Shakespeare's Dramatic 
Art' by, 362-3 



494 



WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 



VARIORUM 

Variorum editions of Shakespeare, 

337, 338, 378 

Vautrollier, Thomas, the London 
printer, 33 

Venesyon Comedy, The, produced by 
Henslowe at the Rose, 72 

'Venus and Adonis': pubhshed in 
1593, 78; dedicated to the Earl 
of Southampton, 78, 130; its 
imagery and general tone, 79, 
the influence of Ovid, 79; and 
of Lodge's 'Scillaes and Metamor- 
phosis,' 79 and n 2; the motto, 
79 and n i ; eulogies bestowed 
upon it, 82, 83; early editions, 

83. 3" 

Verdi, operas by, 369 

Vere, Lady Elizabeth, 394 

Vernon, Mistress Elizabeth, 395 

Verplanck, GuHan Crommelin, 341 

Versification, Shakespeare's, 50 and 
w, 51 

Vigny, Alfred de, version of Othello 
by, 368 

Villemain, recognition of the poet's 
greatness by, 367 

Vincent, Augustine, relations with 
Jaggard, 324 and n 

Virginia Company, 397 

Visor, William, in Henry IV, mem- 
ber of a family at Woodman- 
cote, 172 

Voltaire, strictures on the poet by, 
366, 367 

Voss, J. H., German translation of 
Shakespeare by, 360 



Walden, Lord, Campion's sonnet 
to, 144 

Wales, Henry, Prince of, the Earl 
of Nottingham's company of 
players taken into the patronage 
of, 2^g n 

Walker, Sir Edward, 292 

Walker, William, the poet's god- 
son, 285 

Walker, W. Sidney, on Shake- 
speare's versification, 50 n 

Walley, Henry, printer,^ 234 

Warburton, Bishop, reviser of Pope's 
edition of Shakespeare, 334 

Ward, Dr. A. W., 381 



WHETSTONE 

Ward, Rev. John, on the poet's 
annual expenditure, 210; on the 
visits of Drayton and Jonson to 
New Place before the poet's death, 
280; his account of the poet, 377 

Warner, Mrs., 356 

Warner, Richard, 381 

Warner, William, the probable 
translator of the MencBchmi, 55 

Warren, John, 312 

Warwickshire : prevalence of the 
surname Shakespeare, i, 2; posi- 
tion of the Arden family, 6; 
Queen Elizabeth's progress on 
the way to Kenil worth, 18 - 

Watchmen in the poet's plays, 32, 

64. . 

Watkins, Richard, printer, 409 

Watson, Thomas, 63; the passage 
on Time in his 'Passionate Cen- 
turie of Love' elaborated in 
'Venus and Adonis,' 81 and n 2; 
his sonnets, 87, 443 n 2, 444; 
plagiarisation of Petrarch, 105 
11 4, 106; foreign origin of his 
sonnets, 107 n i, 116; his 'Tears 
of Fancie,' 117 n i, 449; 414 

Webb, Judge, 389 

Webbe, Alexander, makes John 
Shakespeare overseer of his will, 
II 

Webbe, Robert, buys the Snitter- 
field property from Shakespeare's 
mother, 12 and n i 

Webster, John: allusion in the 
White Divel, 287 w 

Weelkes, Thomas, 189 n 

Weever, John : his eulogy of the 
poet, 185 n; allusion in his 
'Mirror of Martyrs' to Antony's 
speech at Caesar's funeral, 219 

Welcombe, enclosure of common 
fields at, 279, 280 and n 

Wengeroff, Prof., 370 

'Westward for Sm^elts' and the 
Merry Wives of Windsor, 178 
and n 3; story of Ginevra in, 258 

Whateley, Anne, the assumed iden- 
tification of her with Anne Hatha- 
wav, 24 and n 

Whel'er, R. B., 379 

Whetstone, George, his Promos and 
Cassandra, 245 



INDEX 



495 



WHITE 

White, Mr. Richard Grant, 341 

Whitehall, performances at, 85, 86, 
242, 243 and n, 249, 263 n, 273 

Wieland, Christopher Martin: his 
translation of Shakespeare, 360 

Wilkins, George, his collaboration 
with Shakespeare in Timon of 
Athens and Pericles, 251, 252; 
his novel founded on the play of 
Pericles, 253 

Wilks, Robert, actor, 351 

Will, Shakespeare's, 210, 280, 282- 
285 

'Will' sonnets, the, 122; Eliza- 
bethan meanings of 'will,' 432; 
Shakespeare's uses of the word, 
433 ; the poet's puns on the word, 
434; play upon 'wish' and 'will,' 
435; interpretation of the word 
in Sonnets cxxiv-vi and cxliii, 
436-42 

'Willobie his Avisa,' 159-62 

Wilmcote, house of Shakespeare's 
mother, 6, 7; bequest to Mary 
Arden of the Asbies property at, 7 ; 
mortgage of the Asbies property 
at, 12, 27; and 'Wincot' in The 
Taming of The Shrew, 170, 171 

Wilnecote. See under Wincot 

Wilson, Robert, author of The 
Three Ladies of London, 70, 7 1 

Wilson, Thomas, his manuscript 
version of ' Diana,' 54 

Wilton, Shakespeare and his com- 
pany at, 239, 240, 427 and n 

'Wilton, Life of Jack,' by Nash, 
401 and n i 

Wincot (in The Taming 'of The 
Shrew), its identification, 169, 170 

'Windsucker,' Chapman's, 139 ?^ 

Winter's Tale, The: at the Globe 
in 161 1, 259; acted at Court, 260 
and n 1 ; based on Greene's Pan- 
dosto, 260; a few lines taken from 
the 'Decameron,' 260 and n; the 
presentation of country life, 260. 
For editions see Section xix 
(Bibliography), 31 1-4 1 

'Wire,' use of the word, for women's 
hair, 122 and n 2 

Wise, Andrew, 66 n, 215 n 

Wise, J. R, 378 



ZEPHERIA 

Wither, George, 415, 404 n 2 

'Wittes Pilgrimage,' Davies's, 457 
n 2 

Women, excluded from Elizabethan 
stage, 39 and n 2; in masques at 
Court, 39 n 2; on the Restora- 
tion stage, 351 

Women, addresses to, in 'Sonnets,' 
96, 121-4, 126 n, 127, 128, 158 

Woncot in Llenry IV identical 
with Woodmancote, 172 

Wood, Anthony a, on the Earl of 
Pembroke, 430 

Woodmancote. See Woncot 

Worcester, Earl of, his company of 
actors at Stratford, 10, 36; under 
the patronage of Queen Anne of 
Denmark, 239 n 

Worcester, registry of the diocese 
oi, 3, 21 

Wordsworth, Bishop Charles, on 
Shakespeare and the Bible, 18 n i 

Wordsworth, William, tije poet, 
on German and French aesthetic , 
criticism, 361, 366 

Wotton, Sir Henry, on the burning 
of the Globe Theatre, 269, 270 n; 
letter to Sir Edmund Bacon, 387 
n 2 

Wright, Dr. Aldis, 341 n, 329 

Wright, John, bookseller, 94, 327 

Wriothesley, Lord, 397 

Wroxhall, the Shakespeares of, 3 

Wyatt, Sir Thomas, sonnetteering 
of, 87, 99, 105 n 4, 443; his trans- 
lations of Petrarch's sonnets, 
105 n 4 

Wyman, W. H., 389 

Wyndham, Mr. George, on the 
'Sonnets,' 95 n, 114. n; on. Antony 
and Cleopatra, 254 7t; on Jaco- 
bean typography, 436 w 

YoNGE, Bartholomew, translation 

of 'Diana' by, 54 
Yorkshire Tragedy, The, 187, 252, 

328 

ZEPHERIA, a collection of sonnets 
called, 45; ; legal terminology in, 
33 n 2, 451 ; the praise of Daniel's 
'Delia' in, 447, 451; 452 



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